a REAL economy

[Shleepy]

It seems that most people agree on a closed economy (and possibly other methods to facilitate the cyclic flow of money?), so does anyone know if that has been OFFICIALLY proposed on the official wish list?

[Mkt2015]

Unless people are going to be selling items they have in the game on ebay.com, it will be a closed economy, or a closed system.

It\'s all about systems. The library in the game will be a system...a very small system with few variables, but it will be a variable of it\'s own within the whole [game] system.

A good idea would be to put this one hold until we know exactly what all in going to be in the game: food, stones, weapons, magic, etc. When we know that, then the economic system should be pretty apparent.

[Shleepy]

Mkt2015, I don\'t think you know what I\'m talking about...

I mean there is a LIMITED SUPPLY OF MONEY.  Read taltiren\'s first post (it\'s the first reply on the first page) for a very nice explanation.

[Mkt2015]

For starters your post on a closed economy is stating the obvious. Of course it\'s going to be a closed economy. Does a closed economy facilitate a cyclical flow of money? This almost makes no sense because if there isn\'t a flow of money then there is no economy. Again, you\'re stating something that is completely obvious.

I think the big question is on inflation and how it can be controlled. Yes, I did go back and read that post.

No inflation: There is only a certain amount of money in circulation and there would be hoarding and eventually there would be no more money to go around. Unless you could control hoarding (which I doubt you could) I don\'t see how this could be an option. Secondly I think that there could be anywhere between 100 people playing the game and a million people. If there\'s only a certain amount of money then the money is going to be stretched extremely thin. The only way that this might work is that a certain amount of money is put into the system based on how many people play the game. $500 (I know that money is the game is handled differenly, but just bare with me) for each person who joins the game. Well, what if several join and then quit a week later. What happens to their money and how would that affect prices?

Inflation: I don\'t know how it could be controlled to a certain degree such as 1% inflation or some such other percentage. I think it really depends as to what people are going to do. Hoarding could be a big problem. Of course, if someone has money they\'ll probably end up spending it unless they are working towards a house or a castle. If enough money is added to the system to accommodate the amount of people who join the game I don\'t think inflation would be a big problem. However, I think the bottomline is that inflation is going to occur no matter what because I really doubt that having a fixed amount of money in the game will work.

How can you have banks that give out loans with interest rates if you plan on having a fixed amount of money?

[ShadowForm]

Ideas.
(1) Shopkeeper funds -
  Shopkeepers can only spend money they have.  Each shopkeeper has [X] money, and this number slowly increases over time (from assumed npc purchases).  This means that you might have to find a rich man\'s shop to sell an expensive item or settle for a low lump of cash.  Additionally...  each shopkeeper can onlyhave [X] much money maximum
Option: The less money a shopkeeper has, they less they are willing to pay for different things.
Reasons-
  Limiting the speed at which players can reduce drops to liquid assets will in turn help inflation.
Possible methods of implementation-
Method A) Simply add 4 to the shopkeeper\'s cash on hand every half second/second/whatnot, and cap it at a certain amount.  Higher-class stores (magic stores, in particular) might have higher caps, longer cash-on-hand increase waits, and larger individual cash-on-hand increases.
(Ex: A general store owner might sell bread, wine, and general supplies cheaply; a relatively constant income of small amounts.  A potion store owner might only sell only a few things each minute, but gets more cash from these sales.)
Method B) When the total value of items in a shopkeeper\'s inventory/shopbox reaches a certain value, they no longer buy items.  Possible graduated scale (Ie, when value reaches 60% of cap, pay 10% less for items, 80% of cap pays 20% less, simulating how less money on hand would make the shopkeeper more reluctant to pay out money).  I\'m not sure how you\'d code it, but I think this one might be easier.

(2) Total Cash Available
  It\'s entirely beleivable that there might be more value of goods in an economy than there is of actual gold/silver specie (as this case may be, crystal specie).  To increase the number of raw currency, you have to go mining of course.  Possibly take the total amount of money available to shopkeepers worldwide, and limit it (Ie: 10 shops with caps of 10,000 currency each, but the sum of all of their currency can not exceed 50,000).
  To increase the amount of money available, mine the crystal/mineral/etc and take it to a mint/gem polisher/etc and get it turned into viable currency.  Every times a character does this, increase the amoung available throughout the world a bit (Ie: Joe mines 500 currency worth of raw material.  The total currency available for the shops goes from 50,000 to 50,050).  No idea what would be good to balance, but 5:1 or 10:1 should be a good starting guess for test purposes.

(3) Player based economies
  Possibly, cut out stores entirely.  Listen me out before shouting me down.  Instead of stores, have \'sale houses\'.  Players put an item/group of items for sale, but don\'t collect cash until another player buys the item/set.  Basically like an open market, but simplified to make it easier on the players - instead of trying to buy and sell at the same time, you set what you want to sell, brows what others are selling, and then check to see if your items sold before leaving.  If not, leave, quest, whatever, come back; if it\'s sold, then collect your money and move on.
  This is probably the least susceptible to inflation, since the only way of actually increasing the amount of liquid currency in the economy this way is through monster drops/quests/game-based methods.  Very easy to control cash flow.  If there is too much cash lowing around, though, just have \'NPC sales\' - players get an item, but the money goes to an NPC (dissappears).
  Also the most accurate for supply and demand.  Items with high demand can fetch better prices, low demand means low prices (or, for extremely rare but also not frequently used objects, massiely high prices).
  Could also lead to a complex barter system - trading items directly for items.

  If I may use an example from another free MMORPG I\'ve played (Runescape), the object-barter used to be almost a rule.  Coal certificates (worth 5 pieces of coal; used in smithing) were almost universally worth 1,000 gold.  People would frequently use coal certificates as a means of paying for other goods (high-end equipment, large numbers of magic components/other consumable resources, other types of smithing material, etc).
  The certificates themself also served a purpose - coal is the basis for all high-level smithing (steel, mithril, adamantite, runite).  A \'consumable money\' like this might also help limit inflation.

[Kiva]

Additionally... each shopkeeper can onlyhave [X] much money maximum

That\'s funny... I always thought running a shop was about making as much money as possible without hitting the limit. Surely NPCs think the same way.

If you want smarter shops, wish for NPCs that don\'t buy anything they don\'t need, and who don\'t overstock some items, unless they get them for free. What use is rat\'s tail to a blacksmith? (etc.) If you make NPC shops greedy and selfish like a player shop, then you\'ll have an economy where people don\'t get rich by selling junk to random NPCs, and people will have to get a useful profession rather than farming junk that they can sell.

Another way to keep money from getting useless is by making sure that it isn\'t too easy to manufacture wanted items. Take an armorsmith for example. The fact that you can create a full plate armor in a few clicks, in many other games makes it so easy to make tens and hundreds of these now worthless armors. If a plate armor instead took hours to make, as you would have to create every small bit and piece, then it would make the armor valuable, and it would ensure the market doesn\'t get flooded with useless items, only produced to raise skill %.

[Holy Avenger]

i only have 1 thing to say about the economy. Make the money worth something! Usaully money is useless and people just trade items because gold,coins,and etc..... are so easy to get make money hard to get and worth alot so that people just don\'t become rich and items are the only things worth something

[Samoth]

From what I see there is only one city so far, so the concept of multi-city economics and traders will have to wait.

I love the all the posts and think there is some very valuable ideas as well as good community spirit.  But at the end of the day, I think there are only a couple of things that the devs can currently control:

1.    The introduction of goods through quests.
2. The introduction of goods through trades.
3. The price of items bought by NPCs
4. The price of items sold by NPCs.

You need to vary quest items, so no one item becomes plentiful.
You need to make sure any item created will be somehow consumed ? i.e. items that are used frequently brake; consumable items have some sort of shelf life; anything that will keep the amount of items in proportion to the amount of players.

I?m no economists, but I think one way to get to a closed economy or to cap the amount of cash would be to limit the NPCs to only buy items with money that they got by selling other items.  As well as only allow them to sell items they bought from other players.  This would mean that players would be confronted with an NPC merchant that would not have endless supplies of items to sell as well as NPCs that would tell them, ?Sorry, I can not buy that item I do not have the money?.

Originally MMORPGs just let the NPCs sell or buy as much as the players needed.  This was a root of all evil, more items are introduced by quests and trades and since there was an endless supply of cash from NPCs willing to buy, items became less valuable and players accumulated cash.