Dynamic resources and economy?

[Typhorean]

I dunno if this is true of many of the big MMORPGs, since I\'ve really only played F2P ones, but things you do to the world seem kind of...limited.


For instance, if you chop down a tree, it regrows in a matter of minutes, or even seconds.  If you light something on fire, the fire burns away without doing any damage to anything.  If you mine a vein of ore, it is replenished aftera given time (instead of forcing you to dig deeper).

Now, I see two sides to this.  On one hand, it makes the world more stable (if it took a year for a tree to regrow, forests would disapear awfully fast), and on the other hand it limits many aspects of gameplay, such as as creating a statically-inclined economy.  If the same ore is always in the same place in the same amounts, then its prices will remain within the same range, barring tampering with the economy by people who hold significant clout.  But if each vein of ore has to be found and mined out, then if there are *tons* of ore veins found all over the place, the prices of ore will drop because of its abundance, provided there\'s enough manpower to mine it.  Or if only small amounts of ore is found smattered across the face of the earth, err, cave, then the prices will undoubted skyrocket as a result.

Forgive me if I\'m being stupid, but it seems kinda dull to have a statically-resources world.  There are many, many ways just the ore being limited in different ways that could add some spice to PS.

For instace:
If there is a small amount of ore, someone with the right know-how could get a monopoly wether it be through legal tricks or straight up physical denial-of access.

If there is a lot, then a union could be formed to regulate the mining, to make sure that not too much of anything hits the market at once.

Meh, I could go on for hours.  Input please.  And please...  I\'m just a stupid kid.    Don\'t torment me with the hell-flames.

[dfryer]

Dangit, I was just about to post and the thread moved from under me!  (Guess I don\'t need to say \"this should be in the wishlist )

Anyway, I like the idea of a dynamic economy & economically \"scarce\" resources but it will take considerable time and effort if it is implemented.  Then again, so does everything else

Care would have to be taken to minimize \"grief-based\" strategies- holding an undesired monopoly should be a shaky, unstable affair at best.  There is no way that we could extend the economy to cover all aspects of life, but for selected goods I think it can (and should) be done.

[Zeraph]

I would love this idea, but for now I wouldn\'t mind static ru\'s that grow back because it is much easier to implement maybe & we can play the next version quicker, otherwise it\'s another 2 years till the next version after CB... ?(



Actually I was going to suggest something like this, but it had to do with Trees & other plant life, I would think it would not be all that hard to implement, their is a static amount of Trees, when one is cut down, a seedling randomly sprouts, obviously it will not take 1 rl year to grow to a small size. We already have crystals spawning randomly so all we need is about 3 to 5 different meshes for trees & they will change with age...

I propose that in Yliakum Plants Grow @ an extremal fast rate compared to the plants on earth. like they are some how magically enhanced, it would probably be something like 1 year for an Yliakum tree is 1 RL day, so it probably would take about 10 days for a tree to be ready for chopping down.

We can have ancient trees that take 200 years to grow & grow 500 ft high! & you could not cut them down... That is the kind of stuff I would like to see from this...



I also suggested a way of setting up the mining system for non-static walls you can mine:
http://planeshift.oodlz.com/wbboard/thread.php?threadid=5140&boardid=11&styleid=2&page=3
look for the post with the pictures, some in the midle...  

[Efflixi Aduro]

Hmm good idea, but I dont want my house to burn down... and there should be enough trees

[Abel]

In a lot of MMORPGs and a good number of MUDs for that matter, the economy is a faucet-sink economy such that the amount of money that flows in is approximately the same as the amount of money that flows out. In terms or ore, it can be as simple as limiting the amount of ore that can enter the world in a given time interval.

It makes perfect sense to have a finite amount of ore that can be mined from a given mine area though, but this raises a number of questions with regards to item persistence. If a sword you make from the ore is allowed to be disposed of (*poof*), then the ore that you used to make the sword would be permantly out of the game.

At any rate, I think a well-balanced economy is one that has at least a number of commodities(can be money) that is scarce and seemingly finite. In fact, I think a \'central bank\' model might be a good idea too. Each active player in the world causes money to be added to the total amount of money that can exist in the world(say it starts in the royal coffers). This money gets out to the people by services rendered(quests), and goes back to the coffers through services rendered by the state(teleporting, transport) or even taxation. If the state or NPCs run out of money, tough luck, you can\'t sell your stuff, and you don\'t get money from quests.

Then with your resource rate-limiting, rare monster drops, rare ores that you have 1 in a million chance of getting from a mine, you have scarcity of other commodities.

I think the growing trees idea is cool too.. and it gives you replacement wood in case your house burns down.

[Kuiper7986]

I also like a dynamic economy but we have to understand. How it will influence the raw value of \"one tria?\" Is it going to go far in the game? Or will it be a weak currency right from the start?

[PlaneWalker]

It could be implemented by using simple supply and demand.

A store will have inventory for every input and output.

Price for input and output will be adjusted as follow.

Format...
Inventpory state - Price Adjustment.

Input
Low - Increase purchasing price
High - Reduce purchasing price

Output
Low - Reduce selling price.
High - Increase selling price.

The price will never be set such that the store loses money.

If both input and output is high (no one buys, even at lowest price) or if both input and output is low (no supply).  The store will shutdown and become empty or replaced by another randomly generated store.

There could be several stores that buy at lowest price and sell at highest price (normal merchants).

[Seytra]

Yes, a dynamical economy would be good to have. And there is another thing about vegetation: usually you either have
- invulnerable plants (can\'t be impressed by anything you do)
- respawning plants (can be taken and reappear in the same place afterwards)
- tiles (plants that aren\'t actually there)

So what about each plant being an object and having certain actions / things (like fireballs ) affect it?
AND: how about expansion (plants increasing in number? They could overrun untended fields and areas.)
Places could change over time as one kind of vegetation moves in and replaces the type that was there before... wildlife moves... if you plant a tree in a field, it will slowly spread and form a new little forest, so you can even create your own sources of economy... or deplete resources if you don\'t act carefully, like overhunting or clearfelling...?

[dfryer]

If you want to implement a \"grass growing server\" go riiiiight ahead

Not that I don\'t think it would be cool...

[Efflixi Aduro]

Well you were talking about how games economy is always stable and I would like to see an unstable one. So we could go through \"hard times\" where everyone was short on money and \"easy times\" where evrone would have a lot of money.

[Typhorean]

Originally posted by PlaneWalker
It could be implemented by using simple supply and demand.

A store will have inventory for every input and output.

Price for input and output will be adjusted as follow.

Format...
Inventpory state - Price Adjustment.

Input
Low - Increase purchasing price
High - Reduce purchasing price

Output
Low - Reduce selling price.
High - Increase selling price.

The price will never be set such that the store loses money.

If both input and output is high (no one buys, even at lowest price) or if both input and output is low (no supply).  The store will shutdown and become empty or replaced by another randomly generated store.

There could be several stores that buy at lowest price and sell at highest price (normal merchants).

You were missing the point of my post.  The point was to create an economy that could not be implemented through simple terms of supply and demand via shopkeepers.

Rather, supply and demand through shopkeepers and limited resources.

Like today, we are experiencing a shortage of oil.  Prices are going up.  We Americans may even have to pay for more than 1/4 of the oil we buy!! :O  (What is the world coming to?!)

Because of the oil shortage, extra money is being poured into the study of fuel cells and other short-term solutions, such as hybrid cars.

A lot of productivity is coming about, simply because we don\'t have oil fields that refill themselves every 12 seconds.

[Patnik]

if even there will be lots of different ore types, mines, caverns or in the labyrinths should they be available to mine.
For the certain miners they should have access to huge mine shafts at their disposal, these mines should be cleared some of the few monsters that is parallel to this habitat, or atleast near the entrance where the deeper you might travel for the sake of finding more ore you might come across a fearsome monster, Oooh scary!
Fighting is not allowed by the NPC guards that guard the near proximity of the entrace for a certain monster that is yet cleared out of the mine.  =D
but I do not if weapons will be allow in the mine as what i think shouldnt, You should might be able to attack with a pickaxe instead?  but the guards will surely throw you out if you do so...or to even slay thy  >:-p