a REAL economy

[Shleepy]

OK, now, before you diss yet another thread about somehow making a nice economy, please READ the entire thing.

When the word \"economy\" is mentioned about an MMORPG, what do you think of? I dunno about you, but I think about the relation between the units of money and items in the game, specifically items that you don\'t buy from NPC\'s, but from people. Indeed, inflation and deflation certainly exist in games because of this relation, and one could argue that MMORPG economies are very realistic and complex. Yet, think about this for a moment... this economical MMORPG system is not especially complex; it\'s just hard to control. Maybe some of you have heard that the Everquest economy was in trouble from the very start of the game. GM\'s (game masters) actually had to pose as players to regulate it by selling/buying items for a certain amount of money.

WHY DOESN\'T PS HAVE THE WORLD\'S FIRST REAL COMPLEX MMORPG ECONOMY? In case you didn\'t notice that the previous sentence was completely in capitals, I\'ll explain: that is the real point of this thread.

Please note that MOST (though definitely not all) of what I\'m about to say is certainly up for argument and change, but I\'d like PS to have some sort of similar system.

I am but a n00b, but the stuff that PS will integrate into the game sounds awesome, and lots of it is pretty original. Part of this is the seeming focus on jobs and \"businesses.\" This, of course, means that the economy will be pretty hard to regulate and will require quite a bit of experimentation to make it stable and playable. Well, as long as PS\'s economy is hard to regulate, anyway, why don\'t we create a complicated system? What I mean by this is make the economy extremely realistic by MMOPRG standards. For example, the stuff that NPC\'s sell will vary in price according to the city/place that the NPC\'s are in (i.e. the scarcity of that product in that place).

What this implies: there will have to be people that work for the \"government\" of both, the entire game and specific places/cities. I guess a job would have to be \"trader,\" and they\'d have to carry stuff from one city to the other. What I mean by this is that those traders would carry goods produced by either NPC\'s or players from one place and carry them to sell to another place, producing profits for themselves and reducing/increasing the price of those goods, related goods (or as they say in Economics, \"complementary goods\" ), and items which are made using those goods. Being a trader would also be cool because they\'d have to travel long distances (using vehicles or animals, eventually?) and would thus encounter NPC mobs and player thieves. This would also create opportunities for groups/guilds of pick-pockets and just plain assassins. If that isn\'t cool, I don\'t know what is

Of course, this wouldn\'t be that simple. There would have to be a few economists working for the game, and this could be done in a couple ways. First of all, volunteers (such as I), could help get this system started. The programmers would need help figuring out the formulas for the price changes of NPC goods. Those same volunteers could also monitor how much trade is going on and how the value of goods needs to change, and would help the programmers AND the players stabilize the economy. Secondly, there should be a series of jobs relating to the economy in the game. I already mentioned that there would have to be traders. There\'s already plans for smiths, tailers, and stuff like that, and your average adventurers would also hunt and get goods that are 1) required for blacksmithing, tailoring, etc and 2) sold to the NPC\'s, with prices varying by WHICH NPC\'s you sell them to (for example, a librarian would not buy metal for good prices or maybe at all) and HOW MANY of those items the NPC already has. This would make the adventurers travel to other places to sell items to different NPC\'s, and/or stimulate the economy by selling it to players. Note that if the game gets big enough, not too many merchant NPC\'s will be needed (or so I judge by the current plans for the game system). Now, other economical jobs would also include things like businessmen, but those would have to be provided for select volunteer economists. Amateur businessmen would obviously pop up, too, but they would have other official jobs, especially the ones that make items.

The way the economists would regulate stuff is by buying up items (that need to have the prices stabilized or changed) from players and selling them at the prices they want to. Competition from \"amateur businessmen\" and whatever would come into play, so the volunteer economists wouldn\'t completely be in charge of the economy; they would just make sure it doesn\'t collapse, although occasional random changes in the economy would be excellent for varying game-play and make it much more exciting (kinda like a stock market, hehe).

The final thing that I want to just touch upon in this post is the supply/demand issue. The economy obviously functions upon this factor, so businesses and economists would have great impact upon early minor patches to the game. In Everquest, for example, brewing was almost completely useless; in PS, we\'d need to fix that, and programmers would have to occasionally respond to reports that volunteer economists would make, and adjust the need/want of players to buy certain items by changing the effects and the general usefulness of items.

That is all for now. What I\'d love is for developers to respond to this, or just email me at geevil@gmail.com. Fellow players/fans of PS, please post with your comments, but don\'t go too crazy with this post and complain.

[taltiren]

I\'ve actually given this type of thing some thought, and I think it would be much simpler and almost as effective to limit the amount of money in circulation. What this would entail is that random encounters would only drop as much as the amount exited the economy through purchases. Or, if there was too much money in the economy, shopkeepers would give store credit for the time being until there was enough to give (this would be in extreme cases, because it would be pretty annoying). The stability of the money supply should keep prices fairly stable, so that supply and demand can determine prices. Also, bank deposits would be able to recirculate, although banks (just like in our current banking system), will keep a certain percentage of their money on reserve). From my experiences it it inflation that really hurts mmorpg economies.

The consequences of this would be that it would be uncommon to receive money for easy quests.

There would be enough money in the system so that hoarding would most likely not be a factor. If a player does accumulate too much wealth so that it hurts the economy, the devs could offer them a powerful weapon at an extremely high price. This would mean there is still an incentive to get rich, but the effect on the economy could be remedied.

One thing that is probably necessary for this to work would be for players to have to buy things all the time, such as food, armor and weapon repairs, and arrows, to ensure that money circulates.

(Can\'t wait to get my economics degree)

[Shleepy]

Well, actually, I implied that there would be a limited amount of money in circulation, but completely forgot to write it. However, considering the fact that not many people play the game now (since you can\'t even really call it a game, yet), we\'ll need to add more money in circulation later on. Obviously, we can make money worth more/less, but you have to admit that at one point, once the game becomes big (and I hope it does so quickly), it\'s far too hard to keep the economy working by itself. Not only would the kind of system I proposed be fun, interesting, and original, but it fits the current plans for the game.

About the easy quests not making good money: If you\'re saying that\'s a good thing, I completely agree with your viewpoint. I believe what you are implying there is that you don\'t like the \"trader\" job idea, and I see where you are coming from. However, the \"quests\" that they do would really have to increase in difficulty. What I mean by this is that a starting out trader may, initially, make good money for doing a simple quest between two cities that are close by, but that\'s only for a n00b character. As he gains skill points and rises in levels (I\'m not sure if PS even uses the level system, but you know what I mean), the money he earns with the starting out quests would be extremely tiny. However, the profits made from such a quest would increase greatly if he goes between cities that are very far away.

Basically, there would be a \"global economy\" in the game. Each little place in the PS lands could produce some things cheaper and more effectively than other places. For example, not only would City A have goods used in tailoring drop very commonly in the mobs surrounding the city, but considering this, one could 1) tailer in City A because it\'s so cheap and easy and 2) traders could make money going from City A to City B, either selling the goods for tailoring or selling the trailored goods, themselves. This would create an extremely realistic model of specialization, but of course, not EVERYTHING would be completely specialized and not all tailors in City B would go completely bankrupt.

Continuing with the thought of limiting money, my system would easily implement it, and there\'s no reason not to do both with succes. Your last comment about making sure that players would have to buy things is completely on the mark. And that is why I think that both our ideas combined would work so well.

[Shleepy]

Wait, I just realized what you mean about doing easy quests, and I don\'t think you were trying to diss my idea

However, I feel that the last post is still very informative, so please read it, anyway.

[Seytra]

For once, I was actually expecting the economy to work this way, but maybe I was wrong.

Anyway, the only unrealistic part is that the noob trader\'s return would vary depending on the level of said trader. This just doesn\'t sound right, because nobody is going to give a noob more for the same quest just because it\'s a noob.
What I\'d expect is that, as in any other game economy, the amount of money to be made is low, because the risks are low also. As noob, you don\'t have much and don\'t get much, but it\'ll still be a bit. Then you slowly accumulate money and get more experienced, so that you can buy enough to try out either bigger transfers, or take greater risks. That\'s how it is done in any SP game I\'ve playd so far, and it actually is very realistic IMO. If the risk is low, anyone can do it, so the reward or profit margin will be low, because there are so many ppl. doing it. You can either go huge, so that you transport ridiculous amounts of stuff at low margins, most likely instantly saturating the market (if there actually _are_ ways to transport these ridiculous amounts), or you can take up greater risks, which will be more lucrative, because less ppl. are able to do it. This way, noobs would have a source of revenue, simply because more experienced ppl. will not bother doing it. And if they do, it doesn\'t hurt, because they will not be better off than noobs, and will not make much more as well. No need to artificially give noobs more money or artificially reduce it for more experienced ppl. There is a basic difference between money and experience, because you\'ll get the same amount of money for selling a shirt, whether you\'ve just started or you\'ve done so for years. However, you\'ll get more experience for doing something the first time then for doing it the 100000000th time.

My 0.02 tria, now give me that shirt.

[Shleepy]

Woah, I see the fatal flaw in my explanation.

I didn\'t mean that a lower level guy will get more money for doing the same quest/job. What I MEANT was that to the higher level guy, doing the lower level quest would be virtually worthless because the amount of money he makes will not fill his higher-level needs. Face it, the higher level person will need higher level stuff, which will obviously cost more.

Also, I don\'t think I mentioned that doing the higher level jobs will become far more dangerous, since you\'d be going on the longer and far more dangerous routes.

[ArcaneFalcon]

First, several mmorpg\'s already have massive, real world economies.  EQ, SWG, AC (haven\'t heard much about AC 2 but would imagine that one also), FF XI, DAoC, and one other that I can\'t remember the name of all have huge economies.  This includes massive amounts of people tradeskilling and others making a living by simply buying and selling.  I can guaruntee that several other imminent mmorpg\'s will have massive economies, including EQ2, WOW, and quite possibly D&DO.

Second, inflation cannot be stopped.  It happens to every mmorpg.  Some things can be done to help control this, including gambling and a tribute system, but it will never be stopped.  Too many people can figure out how to work a system.  As much as you think you can stop it, I\'m sorry, you can\'t.  There is no way to only allow a certain amount of money into the economy.  Unless the devs decide that they will limit it by simply having all the NPC\'s server wide stop buying things.  In which case, it is possible, and also really dumb and boring.

Third, in about 2 weeks after the CB release there will be 0 return for noob tradeskillers.  If there were then people could make money too easily and inflation would skyrocket.  The longer CB has been out, the longer it will take to become proficient enough at a tradeskill to make a profit.  

Fourth, you can\'t have seperate economies in different cities.  Mmorpg economies are player driven, and players don\'t typically stay in one city forever.  If they did then it would get really boring really quick.  

Fifth, you can\'t have any way for noob players to make decent money.  Period.  No quests or tradeskills can make decent money for noobs, otherwise inflation skyrockets.

And lastly:

In Everquest, for example, brewing was almost completely useless

ROFL!!!  Brewing was not even close to completely useless in EQ.  _EVERY_ piece of cultural smithing and tailoring _required_ a temper or dye (I think that was the tailoring counterpart) which could only be made from brewing.  Every tradeskill in EQ with the exception of fishing was useful.  Fishing was still useful, just to a lesser extent of all the others.

That\'s all for now.

:emerald:

[Shleepy]

Arcane, time to couner-argue all your points.

Brewing in EQ: It WAS almost useless. Yes, I realize that tailoring, especially, used some high-level brewing stuff. Yet, it was very easy to become a master brewer and only a few were needed on the entire server for those rare tailored items. In case you don\'t remember, in EQ, it pretty much came down to quests for good items. I remember a few of those items that needed brewery, and not only were many master tailors capable of making it, themselves, but those tailored items were nowhere near as good as some fairly easy quests that made people who took those quests a lot more money than those tailors.

About your first point: none of those MMORPG\'s had realistic economies, and I already said that EQ\'s economy was so screwed up at the beginning that they needed GM\'s to pose as players and sell stuff, and they didn\'t even tell anyone they were doing it because they realized that their system was too simple to work.

Second point: Inflation doesn\'t NEED to be stopped, it needs to be CONTROLLED to some extent. I\'d even WANT inflation and deflation to happen every once in a while, it\'s a part of a realistic economy, but we don\'t need to flood the game with money, unless it\'s necessary at the time. Of course, things out of the developers\' control will happen. I don\'t doubt this. BUT, it\'d be nice to have a way of fixing things. I also really don\'t see how your comment about NPC\'s stopping buying things is at all relevent.

Third point: Well, of course there will virtually be 0 return for complete n00b tradeskillers. I don\'t see your point there. I doubt that too many people would go crazy and become masters at their trade too quickly, since they wouldn\'t even have the financial means to do so.

Fourth point: you can, it\'s been done before, and it\'s still player driven. As long as we\'re on the EQ example, remember where trade was concentrated back in the pre-bazaar days? Well, actually, a couple places, depending on the server you played on. On most, EC was the trading point, making Freeport the center of EQ. And then, BOOM, bazaar was opened, and everybody just moved their characters there. Note that many many many people just keep idle characters there selling things. In some cases, those characters stay in the same \"city\" (well, zone in EQ) for weeks. However, did people still go from city to city? Of course! And don\'t forget that in PS, you will be able to open stores and stuff like that, so that\'s a permanent thing, which will HAVE to stay in one place. That still doesn\'t mean the owners will have to stay there all the time. You can put an NPC to work for you, or something like that. My system wouldn\'t even be fully implemented for a long, long time, so the game would hopefully be pretty well-developed.

Fifth point: Simply said, I agree. The quests that the n00bs would do would not make them much money. I think I used the word \"decent\" before about the amount of money they make, but by that I mean enough to buy food and stuff like that. I don\'t mean that they\'ll be able to do the quests over and over to make enough money to buy even remotely good stuff. However, they\'ll be able to rise in level so they CAN do hard quests and jobs that WILL get them good money.

On a final note: you mentioned the word \"inflation\" a lot of times. In a controlled economy, inflation should not be a big issue. Also, like taltiren mentioned, it\'s fairly easy to keep it from happening with a limited supply of money. The developers can always add money if needed, but inflation should NOT be an issue and SHOULD be avoided. Nowadays, standards for MMORPG\'s are increasing, and considering the amount of experimentation already done, it\'s obvious that in a completely player controlled economy, inflation IS an issue. BUT, it CAN and SHOULD be controlled.

[Kuiper7986]

Shleepy all of the ideas you posted in the first post of this thread is all fundamental ideas. If you want I can explain why.

complex is like following the laws of supply and demand and following the production curves.

[Shleepy]

Ya, I agree; they aren\'t that complicated.

Supply/Demand would have to be followed, though, but following production curves just doesn\'t apply to MMORPG\'s, unless you\'re talking about microeconomics as it applies to individual businesses, in which case that\'s a given.

I\'m not trying to sound smart or introduce too many new adeas, quite frankly. There\'s only a few things that I want implemented which haven\'t been done in other MMORPG\'s, and the rest was basically the fundamental reasons for them.

[ArcaneFalcon]

Doh, and how do these few changes constitute \"a REAL economy\" versus the existing economies that are pretty much the same minus these few changes?

[Shleepy]

LOL, I think it\'s time for me to delete this thread and make a much less vague one ... but let\'s see if I can still repair this one.

Sorry guys, especially ArcaneFalcon and Kuiper7986. Only now did I realize where you guys are coming from.

I named the thread \"a REAL economy,\" and some of the stuff I mentioned in the first post really made it seem like I want a completely different system of economy from any MMORPG ever created and make it absolutely like real life. And then, when I got comments that I didn\'t expect that argue with, not my main ideas, but with back-up info and stuff like that, I was somewhat surprised. For some reason, it didn\'t really hit me that what you guys, except for taltiren, are arguing that my system will not create some sort of super realistic economy. And I see what ArcaneFalcon was saying about the major MMORPG economies. OF COURSE, they\'re complex economies that work, but in my opinion, there\'s just nothing exciting about them.

Time for an explanation. I made some mistakes in naming the thread and some of the introductory stuff in my first post. What I\'m really going for is a slight variation on the current MMORPG economy system that will not be simply like moderately advanced barter (which is what it is in virtually all current MMORPG\'s). What I basically meant by \"real economy\" is a simplified sort of modern economy. It\'s pretty hard to say what I\'m going for, but let me sum up my points.

PARTIALLY SPECIALIZED ECONOMY: I imagine we\'ll have different styles, different races, etc for cities/areas, so why not actually have them be a bit different? Mobs would drop items in some places that are different (or rarer) in other places. This would make the transportation of those items fastest to certain cities, making those cities \"centers\" for those items and goods that are made with those items. Please remember that the reason for me writing this thread is that I want this system to work well with PS, and in my opinion, it would. Since people will have specialized jobs and will be able to open stores and stuff like that, a specialized economy would work pretty well. It would also make different cities special, and they would not just be useless places where a bunch of NPC merchants sell cheap, common stuff. Some people (depending on their jobs) would actually have to commute between cities and travel within cities to find, for example, merchants that sell certain items for cheap. \"Brands\" would sort of be created, especially if guilds were to be formed based on people\'s crafts and the most efficient guilds that sell things in large quantities for cheap would get more business. Thus, competition would be encouraged. I realize that a monopoly would be a thing to watch out for (although an interesting thing), but since I want a more or less controlled economy, it wouldn\'t pose much of a threat.

A FEW DIFFERENT JOBS WOULD BE CREATED: \"Businessmen\" (I refered to them as Traders in my first post) could travel from city to city buying/selling things, from/to NPC\'s and/or players. There could be quests for them to do or just simple business interactions, but it wouldn\'t be easy for a n00b to make a lot of money. Once that n00b becomes higher level, though, he can take long, dangerous trips (because they would have to travel through dangerous places and because bands of thieves and pick-pockets would be encouraged to rob them) to other cities, which WOULD get them larger amounts of money. One thing this would depend on is that thieves/pickpockets would have the abilities to do this to a businessman \"class,\" and that\'s a pretty nifty idea, if I may say so myself As of now, since you won\'t be able to just PvP anyone, this would make those thieves actually successful.

SUPPLY/DEMAND: This is not a new idea in the least. ALL economies function on this idea, but I just want to mention that \"economists\" would have to help developers take care of this early on so that items and tradeskills would be balanced within the game and would heavily depend on other items/tradeskills.

LIMITED SUPPLY OF MONEY: The developers would only release new money every once in a while, when lots of new people join the game, for example, but the supply would be very finite. I will quote taltiren because I agree that the developers should \"limit the amount of money in circulation. What this would entail is that random encounters would only drop as much as the amount exited the economy through purchases.\" This would control the purchasing power of the people, and create a \"circulation of capital\" effect.

VARIATION: A concern is what I\'ve mentioned up till now is just plain boring. I disagree. The economy WILL, just like in real life, fluctuate. Yes, in MMO\'s, the economies just tend to have inflations because there isn\'t a limited supply of money and people can just do quests over and over or kill easy mobs that drop a lot of money to make themselves rich. In a controlled economy with a limited supply of money, this can\'t be a problem. What do I mean by a \"controlled\" economy? It would be regulated by developers and (as I called them in my first post) \"volunteer economists.\" Wouldn\'t it be nice to have an economy where the value of money and items changes from time to time, and not just go down? It\'s possible, pretty easy, and would make the economy an actual part of life, not just a factor in considering the uber l00t that you want to buy. People would use banks as financial safe-havens and not necessarily just for storing items and money that\'s too heavy to lug around. There could even be interest rates in banks and stuff like that

I guess that last paragraph there is the most important, so please read it carefully.

Once again, very sorry to those people that I harshly argued against; I misunderstood your arguments and did not defend myself correctly, and even incorrectly explained myself, in the first place.

Feel free to criticize this, and try to base stuff on this post, and not necessarily my previous ones in this thread.

[snow_RAveN]

well the thing is that ub3r players hoard money, and that money is as good as stuck in a bank.

That thing about online games and real-life is that online we dont eat, dont need to change clothes twice a day, dont need to pay taxes, dont need to buy fuel for the car.

This small things add up to sometimes less than half or more than half of the average man\'s salary. This money goes back to a estranged goverment which uses it to buy/make weapons, hire post men, make roads, invest in hopeless causes, or just have enough to fill a swimming pool. the ammount that is paid to the people who built the pool is used to buy food and stuff like computers or golf-clubs and pay taxes. and it continues in a cycle

and with games not haveing taxes or daily expenses i infer that it is impossiable to have a proper realistic working economy in a game no matter what you do, unless you have the game simulate basic every day expenses theres no way its gonna happen.

besides this has ALL been discused before.

[Zeraph]

Originally posted by snow_RAveN
besides this has ALL been discused before.

I like Shleepy anyway for trying to add detail to his idea, but it gives us something to talk about nun-the-less.
 :]

Actually, I think NPC\'s are the means in controlling most economies in games, unfortunately it\'s mostly noobs buying from the NPC\'s because there are players who will sell it cheaper. that is imo the main reason people say npc shops aren\'t needed, however if you make the economy fluctuate with trading of pc chars then you will not have lots of ppl setting up shops all over the place.

What I mean is every trade that deals with 1 player buying something from another player should be factored into the economy on a zone basis, so all the NPC\'s shops that sell that particular item, the prices will be effected on how many people are buying a particular item & how much they are buying it for, regardless if they are buying from an NPC or if they are buying from another player. that would definitely control inflation. because if the NPC price becomes to low, the player stores will pack up & move to were the NPC\'s sell for a higher price. Also to make sure that the prices do not plummet into the ground by people buying stuff for cheaper from players then npc\'s you would need to factor in how many people are buying an item. that way if people are buying allot of items in a certain city because it is cheep there then prices will skyrocket. however, maybe there should be a set margin for the entire server client, averaging all of the zone\'s markets & to not let prices fluctuate to rapidly.

This would make many players traveling salesmen or peddlers I think they were called. people should have the ability to purchase large wagons to hall items around in like a store. it would discourage people from creating \"mule chars\" because you will have to be moving from place to place most often...

Also, you should be able to purchase a list of  \"suggested retail prices\" for that zone @ a particular time from npc\'s....

[Shleepy]

Zeraph hit the spot precisely Completely agree with ya there, bud, and I think you covered snow_RAveN\'s concerns pretty well, but I\'ll make some points, too.

This is a long thread, and I this has been mentioned before, but like snow_RAveN said, daily expenditures and stuff like that are important. In my opinion, it would NOT be that hard to create things like that. Food is in most MMO\'s, and if we make food (and other stuff that we can think of) more desirable and increase the want/need for similar stuff, that\'s \"daily\" expenses right there.

People hoarding money should not be a big issue with a controlled economy. Not only this, but the modern world economy really functions on those people that hoard money! The world market runs on those guys like Bill Gates and the other multi-billioners that keep their money in stocks and banks. Banks are pretty important, by the way. Loans and interest rates would be a VERY interesting touch to an MMORPG economy.

I realize that this kind of stuff has all been discussed, but why not make a nice, collective list of thoughts about the economy and making it really friggin cool?

One thing that snow_RAveN and a few of the other people don\'t understand about me is that I REALIZE that MMORPG\'s don\'t quite function like real life and they have economical systems of their own. As I previously mentioned, those economical systems are  basically moderately-advanced forms of barter (just with currency), and there\'s MANY concepts that could be applied to make the PlaneShit economy 1) original  2) realistic/\"modern\" 3) FUN.