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Player Driven Economy
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dragonseyes



Joined: 01 Sep 2004
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 1:32 am    Post subject: Player Driven Economy
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HR-Trevor wrote:
Tylen wrote:
Besides, I don't think there's ever been a game with a decent player-based economy. At least I've never heard of any. I doubt this game will succeed where so many others have failed.


Oh, we could do it. People just wouldn't like it.


I'm curious as to what would be involved in making a good player run economy. One thing that I would have to suggest, but would actually hate, is to make clothing decay. That includes packs, and clothing. I would prefer that at least Underclothes remain non decay, because there is nothing like coming back and finding yourself undressed completely. Ick.

I would think to make a good ticker system, to do a player run economy, you would need to keep track of how many items the "System" bought, how many it sold. So you make 30 healing potions, and you sell it at a shop, or at a broker. It goes onto a shelf, where others come and buy it from the system. If 20 people are making them, and only 10 people are buying, then the prices will fall, both for selling and making. Then people will make less, because they don't make money from it. Thus, the supply will go down, and the demand will stay the same, or possibly go up, because the prices are lower, meaning that the price will go up. Then, people will make more items, because prices are back up, and the price will then start dropping again. The problem with this however, is that clothing, even if it became decay, would not move as fast as potions do, because they are not consumeables as potions are.

Lastly, I would think if you spent a certain amount of time, obviously an average, with a low inventory of something, say less then 20, I would think that the MAX price would rise indefinitely until such time as people started supplying that product again. This could possibly be good for those people who are highest in certain skills, because those items would be rarer then those items able to be made by the novices among us, such as myself. At the same time, if an item were constantly in large amounts of stock, then the MAX price would go down, until it were within a range of the minimum price, at which it would stick there until the stock started becoming scarce again.

Also, considering especially things like clothing, there could be a certain amount of "Loss" in the "System shop" that would help keep the price within manageable ranges so that everyone who can make these things would not overload the system too fast.

Heh, I don't know if this is how it is done, but this is what I was figuring would have to happen to make a player driven economy. Of course, it's 1:30 am here, and I could be completely mistaken.

I'm interested in this topic, it's something I enjoy thinking about, but I don't know if this is even how it would work. I look forward to hearing others oppinions on this subject.

Thank you.
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Dzynna
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 1:43 am    Post subject: Re: Player Driven Economy
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dragonseyes wrote:
I'm curious as to what would be involved in making a good player run economy. One thing that I would have to suggest, but would actually hate, is to make clothing decay. That includes packs, and clothing. I would prefer that at least Underclothes remain non decay, because there is nothing like coming back and finding yourself undressed completely. Ick.


The only way I'd support that is if they implemented repair first. Otherwise why sell alterations? It would seriously suck to lose your $500,000 altered outfit because it decayed.
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dragonseyes



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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 1:56 am    Post subject: Re: Player Driven Economy
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Dzynna wrote:
dragonseyes wrote:
I'm curious as to what would be involved in making a good player run economy. One thing that I would have to suggest, but would actually hate, is to make clothing decay. That includes packs, and clothing. I would prefer that at least Underclothes remain non decay, because there is nothing like coming back and finding yourself undressed completely. Ick.


The only way I'd support that is if they implemented repair first. Otherwise why sell alterations? It would seriously suck to lose your $500,000 altered outfit because it decayed.


Heh, not sure I would make EVERYTHING decay, because those are bought from GM's not Player Economy items. But I agree with you. Eventually, however, if they did end up becoming decay, I would expect that, Number 1, Some form of repair would be available, Number 2, that part of that price would be to make them non decay, and or Number 3, that they would be more suited to certain specific occasions, and would not be useful for long after that one occasion. However, for that to happen, I would expect that the price would not be the same, though I could not begin to know how it would change.

Just a side note, this rambling is my own, on a non existant world far far away. If any of this becomes reality, it is not my doing, as I have no power in the real world what so ever, it is simply my thoughts. If any of it is useful, anyone is welcome to it, I'm certain I am not the only one ever to think of this, just maybe one of the few to put it to words.
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Kit
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 5:14 am    Post subject: Re: Player Driven Economy
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If I recall correctly, Yaru and I had posted about clothing decay and repair some time ago. Probably in an Artisan folder.
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HR-Trevor
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 8:43 am    Post subject:
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To make a player driven economy work, you need to implement some very basic principles, and implement them well, and fully:

1- Shops sell almost nothing, and buy at rates far lower than players would be willing to pay. Shops in many cases would even stock the items they buy for resale, and would refuse to carry more than X quantity of Y. Therefore, shops would stop buying X at all for periods of time.

2- Money primarily as a player-to-player exchange tool. If you can buy very little at shops with your money, money becomes something you use to get things from players so you don't have to straight out barter for everything. Otherwise you're always trading items for items, which can be a bit overwhelming. "Money" us used loosely, an even better setup would be money that could be used for other purposes, such as a common resource everyone make use of in some way and has a need for.

3- Everyone has something to offer. Every profession has some way to make or acquire items of value so that no one is left in the rain. This can be challenging, case in point, medics, who are often a support character rather than filling a primary solo role.

4- Regular maintenance and replacement of items. This is mostly obvious, the fine points mentioned above are just that, fine points. The primary issue is that everything needs repair regularly at least.

5- A large selection of possessions and resources. This is vital. There needs to be a huge pool of useful resources for crafting of every type, and items to be found or crafted that people want.

6- Heavily emphasized crafting. To drive a player economy, you have to have lots of creation systems that allow the construction of goods others need.

7- Detailed treasured system. You can't just have 'a treasure system' for combat. You need a huge amount of variety in treasure so that you have lots of different, valuable objects that could be found. Some classes rely much more on combat for "income" than others, so they need to get the desirable objects they'll sell/trade to other players from this system.

8- An intricate system for selling goods to other players. There needs to be methods sell and advertise goods, whether the seller is online or offline.

So what you're left with is a system wherein very little selling takes place to the environment, and instead to other players. Cash itself is valued according to what players decide, since it's a commodity used almost exclusively by players.

Joe Tracker might acquire pelts and plants crafters need, Bob Merc, George Guardian and Fred Trooper are probably doing a combination of missions and flat out hip deep monster hunting for treasures to sell/trade to others. Suzy Psionic and Mike the Mage can split income between treasure hunting and crafting occult/magical items. And so on.

But, all of this stuff would not have the instant gratification you have now. You couldn't go hunting, haul loot back to town and sell to to NPC's for your money. Very little income would be made that way. Instead you'd need to find player buyers. Even if you can just toss the goods on a bazaar type system to let players buy it, you have to wait for interest to materialize and a buyer to come forward.

Likewise, if you have money, you can't just go out and buy X. You have to wait for X to be available from whatever its source is.
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Brokyn
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 9:41 am    Post subject:
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Honestly, I'd be willing to at least try out a fully player-driven economy if all of the points Trevor mentioned could be met.

It's either that or we get some kind of harsh implementations aimed at restructuring our current system; it's crazy that everyone and their grandma can become a millionaire in only a few short weeks (Yaru's government worker aside).

If we can't go balls out on player-driven economics, I think we could survive with a few changes that lead us in that direction. For example, someone creates fifty of the same item -- say, a rift potion -- you could have the shop owner begin to decrease his buying price. Why? He's already got a hundred in his storage room, so what makes your fifty any better?

You could also make items currently sold at shops next to worthless. Initially, this would throw off the value of player crafted items (ex: armor) since they would need to start supplying their lower quality items to those that can't afford the really good stuff, but after awhile things would level out. If this were done, I would think professions would be much more willing to cooperate with one another.

As for support classes that aren't setup to go out and be resource hogs or craft whores, like medics and bureaucrats and performers, a well-maintained NPC system would suffice. Performers and Bureaucrats already have systems like this (performances and cases, respectively) and medics are getting theirs soon. In return for their actions they get a little bit of petty cash, based on how much time was involved, with which they can go out and stimulate the rest of the economy.

Performers and Medics, too, can be considered "combat secondary" classes since they do have at least one defense they can triple train (evasion, light armor), so they're not completely out of the treasure system. Bureacrats are even slated to have their own shops, so that would be another source of income for them... to say nothing of bank account interest and tips/charges from selling commodities.

Anyway, I'm done stating the obvious.

--William
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HR-Trevor
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 9:48 am    Post subject:
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I should note that something like this isn't something you really "try". You have to orient a game toward such a concept from the start, which we'd have to do with Live, if ever.
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 9:51 am    Post subject:
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Well. With "try" I was thinking with Live, but more in a "well, if nobody ends up liking it, we can start over with something a little less harsh". It'd suck for you coding folks, but for those of us that don't get to see behind the big red curtain... we don't care. Smile

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soundless
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 10:11 am    Post subject:
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honestly HR could have a fine player based economy right now but i think the biggest issue is that:

1) many people don't like giving money to each other
2) many people don't like selling things to someone if they can do something to make it worth more
3) many people probably sell things for too much but don't realize it, which discourages others from buying them (i'm probably type three in this regard).

i've had some great player-based economy stuff going on now and in the past (especially in the past but now things are going well time to time too) when it comes to buying pelts and such that i use to make scroll cases. the trackers win because i pay well over premium for a pelt, i win because i still make a good profit making and selling the scroll case, but the one loss is probably that, while both of us get more money than if we just did things straight with an NPC, the game might possibly get too much money from things as it is now.

so while what i do to help a player based economy ends up making me richer and the tracker(s) richer, i'm not sure what it does when we go back to a player to NPC economy. BUT, at least we're starting to try to work together and get things figured out.
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Tylen
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 2:53 pm    Post subject:
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While I would love to see a player-based economy, I don't believe it is at all sustainable in a game. It's really just not compatible with most players' mentalities.

Commenting on/adding to Trevor's points (in no particular order):


  • There needs to be a market for goods created by lower level characters. I kinda liked DAoC's material levels, although they weren't scaled well. But then you need to come up with a IC reason why a level 1 can't wear one of Mellie's uber-huge vorpal backpacks of doom.
  • The whole thing is more difficult without also making the economy closed. It's not like most critters should be carrying cash anyway. The main problem with this is a lot of people tend to hoard money, leaving little for everyone else. But we could just go Democratic and enact a wealth tax. Laughing
  • It would require a lot of work to implement. Which would require a lot of time. There's a decent chance it wouldn't be popular even if done correctly and people would whine/leave until it were removed. I still remember when Trevor said that the expected time until Live was closer to six months than one year, and I'm fairly sure that was more than a year ago. I doubt that working on something with such high risk/questionable reward is worth delaying it even further.


dragonseyes wrote:
I would think to make a good ticker system, to do a player run economy, you would need to keep track of how many items the "System" bought, how many it sold. So you make 30 healing potions, and you sell it at a shop, or at a broker. It goes onto a shelf, where others come and buy it from the system. If 20 people are making them, and only 10 people are buying, then the prices will fall, both for selling and making. Then people will make less, because they don't make money from it. Thus, the supply will go down, and the demand will stay the same, or possibly go up, because the prices are lower, meaning that the price will go up. Then, people will make more items, because prices are back up, and the price will then start dropping again.


This is something I once suggested for the commodity system. I didn't go into much detail explaining it and of course it was shot down fairly quickly. One neat thing about this is you could let people make/lose money by playing the market. The main disadvantage is you often have people who "crash" the market through ignorance/spite/frustration.

soundless wrote:
i've had some great player-based economy stuff going on now and in the past (especially in the past but now things are going well time to time too) when it comes to buying pelts and such that i use to make scroll cases. the trackers win because i pay well over premium for a pelt, i win because i still make a good profit making and selling the scroll case, but the one loss is probably that, while both of us get more money than if we just did things straight with an NPC, the game might possibly get too much money from things as it is now.


That's just players cooperating to increase profits since at the end of the day you're still just selling to a NPC merchant. At best, it's half of a player-based economy.
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soundless
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 3:32 pm    Post subject:
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Tylen wrote:
That's just players cooperating to increase profits since at the end of the day you're still just selling to a NPC merchant. At best, it's half of a player-based economy.


true, but i also had some good low-scale things where i'd pay a tracker a nice amount to get me exceptionals, then i'd sell the exceptional backpack/satchel/etc to a player for a large amount of money.

i think even with a pure player based economy we'd need an NPC somewhere, just because:

1) eventually everyone has the product (or at least those who want it/can afford it)
2) the money has to be genereated from a source somewhere, be it a critter or a store

if i sold those scroll cases to players, then those players had to have gotten money somewhere, be it selling stuff to NPCs or hunting.

and, if items decayed, there still would be an NPC related somewhere, it just solved the issue of #1.
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tygerwulf
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 3:44 pm    Post subject:
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I don't really get the whole decay thing. I mean, you would need it for an economy like this, but it just doesn't make sense. It's like, I go to get a shirt out of my drawer that I bought last week and oh, damn, it rotted away.
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 3:58 pm    Post subject:
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I think that before anything, we need more players heh.
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Tylen
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 4:00 pm    Post subject:
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soundless wrote:
i think even with a pure player based economy we'd need an NPC somewhere


Well, that wouldn't be a pure player-based economy, would it? There's no such thing. It'd be like trying to imagine real world "free markets" completely devoid of government influence.

It's just a matter of how much/little NPC's can be involved. They can't be eliminated. The only way for it to be "pure" would be to involve player-created currency. That sounds fun, but I'd imagine the in-game local governments wouldn't be too thrilled.

tygerwulf wrote:
I don't really get the whole decay thing. I mean, you would need it for an economy like this, but it just doesn't make sense. It's like, I go to get a shirt out of my drawer that I bought last week and oh, damn, it rotted away.


That's pretty much how comms work. Could you imagine if your cell phone (or better yet, your computer) needed to be repaired every few days?
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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 5:45 pm    Post subject:
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My piece of crap computer probably should be repaired every few days.
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