Finite economy

[Ravenmaster]

In many games that have been out for more than a couple weeks, money becomes negligible and only trade is implemented.  That never happens in real life. I suggest a finite money system. Now the money could change as the game goes on and more players join, but it would be added in by the devs.  If monsters drop money, you could have a pool for every monster type or every monster in a certain area.  This pool is all the money these monsters could possibly drop.  If you kill one, you get a fraction of that total pool and however much you get is subtracted off.  If a monster killed someone, that person would lose some of their money and it would be added to the monster\'s pool. Therefore, tough monsters that frequently kill people would give more money when you kill them.  As for getting money when you start out, there would be a pool for that, too. Then each new player would get a small fraction of that pool to start out.  The fraction would be larger if you chose rich or very rich when creating your character.

[Kinoss]

I like the idea of a monster money pool! But I dont really understand the advantages of finite money system... enlighten me.

[Ravenmaster]

Without finite money the game would just get more and more money. Basically, inflation would be through the roof and you could only buy from NPCs.  If the economy is supposed to be monetary and not mercantile, you would need to have a finite money system.  Basically, if money were infinite, there would be so much that it would not be worth anything.

[paxx]

There will be a very involved economy in this game. To some this may be an annoyance but to others this will be more fun then killing monsters all the time.

The economy will be something that changes dependant on PC actions, NPC actions, and worlds events. I would like to say that all things will be encapsulated into a ?World AI? but to say that we as developers will never tweak things is unrealistic.

We also hope to make things where if you want to have equipment equivalent to your level and all you do is kill monsters, you will always be short of coin?but to attain that balance will require a lot of adjusting.

[Mehallie]

This actually brings up a question:  just how DO you make money in this game other than from monsters?  Granted, there are \"jobs\" listed ingame, but nothing on the site as to whether these will be considered tradeskills.

Wee bit confused in this regard.

[paxx]

Not to be flippant, but people usually make money by selling things or providing services?it will be the same in this game. the exact details are not worked out to a finality that could be publicly published yet, but the economic part of the game will hopefully act as close to the real world economy as possible. Some things will give little money, some more, some a lot?all based on supply and demand. The issues in this is we have a vast world and the details of the system will need to be tweaked and tweaked till it works in a fashion that the dev team is happy with.  

[Mehallie]

no you\'re not being flippant  It\'s just that I have actually seen MMORPG\'s that supposedly had a tradeskill-based economy that later turned out to give traders NO money whatsoever, and therefore the trading was pretty much scrapped.

I guess I\'ll just wait and see - no rush!

[Fanomatic2000]

Reminds me of DIABLO II where money wasn\'t worth anything. Unrealistic! )=<

[Vengeance]

I think it is safe to say this game will be nothing like Diablo II.

[Ravenmaster]

So will the overall quantity of money within the game be watched to make sure mass inflation doesn\'t ruin money altogether? By not getting money from monsters or other infinite sources, the system would be finite, although not necessarily regulated.

[krythonthegreat]

I think that money shouldn\'t be finite because then money will be hard to get if everyone gets pecentages i think it should be infinate but developers wach for cheap things people do and warn them not to also i think it should be monitored and the can controll the base price for objects

[Ravenmaster]

Originally posted by krythonthegreat
i think it should be infinate but developers wach for cheap things people do and warn them not to also i think it should be monitored and the can controll the base price for objects

So the devs will monitor EVERYONE and see who is getting money and then tell them to stop? Good plan... (sarcasm)

[Xandria]

I have always had two questions when thinking about the economy of most games like this:

1.  Where do monsters get all this gold?
2.  Why do monsters carry gold at all?

For the first question, I guess they could get gold by killing players, but I think on average in most games monsters drop way more gold than is lost by players.

And for the second, I don\'t see why they would carry it around.  Most monsters are unintelligent and probably have no idea what it is used for (which could be a reason for them to carry it, I guess).  I also highly doubt that they use it to trade with other monsters or players, as that doesn\'t make any sense.

Just a couple things I\'ve been wondering about.  I\'d love to hear some responses from others about this.

[Ravenmaster]

The reason monsters carry gold is so players can kill them and be happy. If monsters didn\'t carry gold they wouldn\'t get killed as often, so their life would be boring since their purpose of existance is to be killed by players. See?

[BloodAndRoses]

along the same lines, why do monsters usually carry the items they drop either? but supposing they didnt, then it would be difficult to gain wealth. quests or the such would work, but it would become pretty tedious. maybe your trade could fetch you a steady source of income, but you would have to know what you were doing.

also, in a finite economy, the first x players to register would all receive some set amount of gold, but then every subsequent player would receive less and less gold until at some point there are enough people registered that no one would recieve gold upon starting a new character, which seems a bit harsh. you could make it such that you start with no gold or something, but then \"rich\" and \"very rich\" would have to be removed.

or maybe they should implement some way to counteract inflation, like if you die, some of the money you have simply vanishes, much the same way governments destroy some of their money to keep the value up.