I did a lot of reading today and I found two links that are somewhat interesting for this discussion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online_game_mechanicsUO has a overall skill limit to avoid players doing too many different skills in high profession. You can also lower some skills in order to be able to gain points in others.
http://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.htmlThis is a paper on the economy of UO about a year after it started.
Interesting is that UO had several mechanisms that restricted selling and buying items to and from NPCs and at some time a "closed system" where ressources only spawn, when others get drawn out of the system.
This is not intended to be a general advice to switch to an old UO model, but to consider different possibilities in order to find a solution suitable for PS.
That last economy link is not that much about balancing economy over the different skills (which needs to be done in PS), but more about inflation and deflation overall.
I don't expect everybody reading this topic to read all of that and more. I just give some links for interested readers.
PS:
Yes, both is about Ultima Online. This is only because it really is a very big and long term project that has seen lots of research and was one of the first really big games. I guess most of the guys developing PS know a lot of that, but maybe some of the readers don't have things in the back of their head at the moment.
