Economy

[NathanRahl]

I was wondering if DnL was going to have one of those annoying "limitless" ecomony models. What I mean is that will you be able to sell and sell and sell to the same merchant for about forever and will hel still have his endless amount of money? I personally would like to have a finite amount of money in the world (albeit a very large amount) but a finite amount of money none the less. This opens quite a few interesting possiblties in my eyes. You could for instance drain money out of a fortresses surronding ecomony and laugh as it fails and in the passing chaos you could sweep in promise to revatilize the ecomony and there you go, now by a clever manipulation of money and merchants you have your own fortress. This might be a big exagrration but I think you all have an idea of what i mean. I know there are a few downsides to an approach to an ecomony this way but i think the new ways to play outwiegh those few downsides.

I know this was possibly way too long but I had alot of free time to think about and write this up.

-In reponse to Mene what i mean is that there would be a certain amount of gold in the world, one amount, unchanging complete static amount of money. Actually static won't be the right word but basically the amount of money won't change alot I mean players need some starting money o buy eq (or maybe they start out with eq but with no money) either way the amount of money in the world does not change. Basically this boils down to where if you want to you could literally put a merchant out of business if he or she was dumb enough to use up all his or her gold. I know this might sound harsh but to me it adds a certain amount of realism.

-Partly my reponse the Catz and partly something so related to ecomony I though i should discuss it here. Now I am glad the Catz thought of one of those downsides to my question/ long rant. The whole point of this sytem in my eyes is to limit ourtrageous prices on items and add a touch of realism. Sure there might be flaws but everything can't be perfect. So if for instance the above system were to fail because of a sudden surge of new players and a drain were placed upon all of the world some higher power (probably the game masters) could with some discretion infuse the ecomony with more gold or perhaps even give out some kind of permit to players to be able to mint a certain amount of money per week or something slwoly bringing the ecomony back to a stable level and when that happens the game masters could perhaps invalidate the permits until something like this were to happen again

-Yet another reponse to the small conversation Shazi and Mene had at the bottom of the thread. I know this sort of "action" if you will appeals to few people conversant with EQ or AC. I think this is because you (Mene) like the endless hack and slash envrioment that those games revel in. But isn't DnL supposed to be new and exciting with many different types of play that apeeal to many different people. I myself would love to ruel through politics since I am not a hardcore player. This sort of enjoy life in the game at a slower pace appeals to me and i know quite a few people that would like the same thing. Thats my two cents.

[Edited on 31/1/2003 by NathanRahl]

[Edited on 1/2/2003 by NathanRahl]

[Antaean]

Definitely a good idea! I would like to see limited money.

[Terevanincu]

Limited amount of money is a good idea an dit will encourage people to come back to trading equipmentand ressources...

[Shazi]

A very good idea, that will also stop all these "super-high prices" on rare equipment...
A good (or perhaps bad) example is runescape (www.runescape.com). If you want a decent piece of armor you will have to pay over 100.000 gold for it.

[Mene]

i don;t get the concept. are you talking about vendors or are you talking about how the omney in ciurculation only increses by the number of gold dropped by monsters and ppl.

[Shazi]

Well... Im talking about the second one, there is WAY to much money going around in runescape...

A little example (a true one)

Currently armors ingame is: bronze (50 gold), iron (100 gold), steel (200-300 gold), mithril (500 Gold). This is a quite decent price, but then the RS staff decides to add in a new armor called "Adamanite". Now, adamanite is being sold by a few skilled player-smiths. The thing is the veterans in RS has so much cash that they will gladly pay 10.000 gold for one piece of adamanite armor. This results in that the player-smiths gets greedy and ONLY sells the armor for 10.000 gold. Because of this all new players have to earn money as hell (excuse me) to be able to buy this new armor and that results in ALL players being rich. And since practicly everyone has lots of gold all player-merchants can take even more payment for their Adamanite armors... It has continued like this for ages and the only thing stopping it is that the npc-traders now are selling adamanite armors for lower prices than the player-merchants.

[Mene]

That makes sense!

[Grovsalt]

A really find idea indeed.

[Catz]

well I would have to say I find it a bad idea making a static money system, instead they could make it a real money system like it would have been in such a world :D
where coins are made of metal, that u will have to mine, and not dropped randomly from monsters unless these monster picked them up from the ground afplayers death or by some other way. and only monsters with use of gold/weapons etc would pick stuff up.

[Grovsalt]

Insted for monsters dropping money they player could take somthing from it with value.
Like if i kill a dragon it shouldnt drop a big pile of money, but what if i could skin it and sell the hide? Or the claws or something else.

[Mene]

Then again Dragons were quite like humans in the fantasy world. They were greedy and had piles of money. Atleast that how i heard it.

[Madsniper]

that might not stop players from raising prices on rare items

they could find a rare item, for exxtreeeeeeme example armour that heals 10 hit points every 20 seconds, they find this item and knowing the average player might only have 20k he will charge 300k for this item and make other players try to get that much gold whatever way they can eg hackign into poeple acounts and scamming

maybe im going over the top a bit but greedy players will remain greedy
i havnt herd of this idea in other games and i think its probly a good idea,

andother question if they were to start DnL world with eg 20 million dollars in it, where woudl it start? in caves? would be fun to walk into a cave with 30k just lying around.

overall a good idea, i woudl liek to see the limit incress every year or so


catz i also love the idea of metal made coins and mining ooo i love mining and making big fat killer weapons yummy

[Shazi]

Question 1: Well, what you say is true, but first of all he has to find someone that is WILLING to buy his extreme armor for 300k. 2nd of all i just want to say that there is no way we can stop these things completely, but we can try to prevent it as much as possible.

Question 2: I think the money will start in the hands of the NPCs. So that we have to complete quests and sell things to get our hands on some money...

[Madsniper]

yes i do apologise i was thinking a rather extreme case, but hey i just watched conan the barbarian and have been jumping up and down fighting invisable worriors

i have weapons and armour on the brain, oo just to think of a nice 2 hander short blade poison coated blessed by the god of war and created in the belly of the master dragon

ooo special

but yes back on topic i think this idea is worth a very well thought over to be implemented into the game

[Grovsalt]

"Then again Dragons were quite like humans in the fantasy world. They were greedy and had piles of money. Atleast that how i heard it."

I just took dragons as an example, it could be any animal that i kill. Like a wolf, i coud skin it and sell the hide or maybe even make a wolfleather armor or cape? ;)

It would be a hard blow to the RP feeling if a wolf went around with gold in his "pockets".

[Shazi]

Indeed... my opinion is: Animals drop hides, meat and bones. Intelligent creaturs such as Trolls might drop some basic equipment, weapons and maby even some gold.

[Mene]

Well at first it takes time to get to higher level right? and to kill trolls and such you would usually use armour and weapons that cost money. So if smaller animals don't drop gold then it could take longer then the amount of patience people have.

They'll find a creative way..

[Shazi]

Nothing stops you from selling the hides and meat you get from the smaller animals... When you have enough money from the hides and meat you can buy some kind of armor.

[Mene]

But the question is how long will it hold the interest of player. een i something do seem unreal. problem with people is that there either not willing to pay or their patience and interest wears out pretty fast. The game need something that will hold the attention fo a long time to ome. Quite like EQ. It's been out very long and people stil come back for more.

[caanan]

FIRST.... POST.... EVER...
we should worship this thing :D

[angelfang]

Limited money? Only for one person, or for everyone? If its the latter that'd be insane... the ebb and flow would be impossible to calculate, the vendors would be sucked dry in 12 minutes from 15k players selling their junk and everyone would be complaining again.

[Panerdar]

Would be interesting to see.

[Amizar]

If you want to counteract a "limitless" cash flow, the best solution is to provide enough cash sinks of desirable services or items with limited uses. A static cash flow only stifles an economy. In the long run, a highly desired item will still cost a lot. The only difference will be the relative amount of "a lot".

How would you deal with a new player who doesn't start playing until 6 months after release, and if this money cap has already been hit, can't go out and earn any?

There are a whole slew of problems that come with proposing a capped economy. Not to say there aren't problems that come with a non-capped one, but I don't even want to think about the backlash when all of a sudden the cash runs out and nothing drops it anymore.

[Frisca]

Good post. It has been posted many, many times on this and many, many other forums. Eve online has an economy that is based on limited resources.

Cheers.

[Tashanen]

This was how the economy was originally setup in UO - it failed.

There's a big White Paper by Zach Simpson on the ramifications of limited economies in virtual worlds based on the experiences of the original UO devs.