MUD Economies
Siobhan
economies on their MU*s. On ours, we've come to something of a glass ceiling
in terms of having a use for gold beyond buying a selling equipment. I was
hoping those who have had experience with things like player-run shops,
player property, trade, or other things might lend us some of your wisdom.
We've tried reducing the amount of gold in play, but players still accumulate
vast sums due to sheer amount of time spent on the mud. Anyone have some
ideas about developing and implementing some more sophisticated economies?
BTW this is not a role playing mud, so aim suggestions towards players who
are not interested in doing such things.
Thanks in advance =)
Siobhan
Brian D. Schenck
(Siobhan) put forth the following:
:>I am interested in ideas which other admins out there have about generating
:>
Currently, we're trying to develop a trading/barter system on the MUD
I am at. In the effort to promote a less gold friendly system (players
have become fairly well accomplished at stockpiling and hoarding,
which is something I'd like to get ideas on stopping). However, the
best way to do it, I feel, is to promote it as an RP element, in an RP
friendly environment. If your MUD is not RP friendly (ie Hack 'n
Slash), then the system will not work well.
You also have to be able to trust players, or at least find a few you
can trust.
--
Glory may be fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
Brian D. Schenck
Flame Form Correctionists Guildmaster
mail to: shr...@wam.umd.edu
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Orion/2976/
Scatter
(Siobhan) wrote:
>I am interested in ideas which other admins out there have about generating
>economies on their MU*s. On ours, we've come to something of a glass ceiling
>in terms of having a use for gold beyond buying a selling equipment. I was
>hoping those who have had experience with things like player-run shops,
>player property, trade, or other things might lend us some of your wisdom.
>We've tried reducing the amount of gold in play, but players still accumulate
>vast sums due to sheer amount of time spent on the mud. Anyone have some
>ideas about developing and implementing some more sophisticated economies?
The usual model is the 'faucet-drain' where there is a method by which
value trickles into the world and a method by which it trickles out
again. Ideally you need to make it trickle out at the same rate it
trickles in. You have the faucet without the drain - value trickles in
in the form of equipment loaded into npcs, and is converted into gold
through selling. There is no drain.
What is needed is a way to pull that value out of the world again,
something to make players convert that gold into something
insubstantial - either buying something temporary that can disappear
and needs to be bought again, or things like services which are
useful.
For example, allow players to rent houses in a city and let them
customise it. Players like to have a portion of the mud they can point
to and say 'this bit is mine!' Make them pay for that with regular
rent (you'll need to decide how the rent is calculated, whether it
takes offline time into account etc.) Allow them to purchase things
like extra lives at high costs (paying a temple for the service etc.)
Clans could also need to rent or buy the clan buildings, requiring
contributions from its members. Perhaps city guards could be bribed
with enough money offered, and so on.
Get npc thieves that wander, stealing gold from players and 'hiding'
it somewhere - another cash drain. If player's have large sums in some
kind of bank, stage a bank robbery event (you could make this a big
deal, with npcs breaking in, getting the gold and running - a big
chase, eventual escape of the robbers and then rumours of a huge hoard
of gold hidden somewhere...)
The other angle of attack is to slow the rate at which value enters
the world. Perhaps weapons and armour get damaged in combat, reducing
their value. Have the equipment load in various conditions rather than
always perfect so that by the time the player has won it its value
will not be so high. Perhaps model inflation such that shops will pay
less and less for the same items as they get more and more of them.
Change the ratio of purchase-value to sale-value in the shops so that
players get much less for selling equipment than it costs them to buy.
I'm sure you can think of more things to try. :)
--
Scatter ///\oo/\\\
Alberto BARSELLA
> I am interested in ideas which other admins out there have about generating
> economies on their MU*s. On ours, we've come to something of a glass ceiling
> in terms of having a use for gold beyond buying a selling equipment. I was
> hoping those who have had experience with things like player-run shops,
> player property, trade, or other things might lend us some of your wisdom.
> We've tried reducing the amount of gold in play, but players still accumulate
> vast sums due to sheer amount of time spent on the mud. Anyone have some
> ideas about developing and implementing some more sophisticated economies?
>
> BTW this is not a role playing mud, so aim suggestions towards players who
> are not interested in doing such things.
If you want something to mantain value over time you must make sure
that it doesn't come in infinite amounts, as it always happens with
repopping.
In praticular, if you want gold to keep its value you must arrange
things so that the total amount of gold pieces in the universe is
constant. Alternatively, you can make their value decrease as the
quantity increases.
For the first idea you can provide some NPC which "sucks gold in",
either by stealing it or by selling services not available elsewhere
(armor/weapon repairs). Rent is another way, but it will tend to hit
players who don't play often. Repairs/mainteinance work better,
because they hit players which play more (and thus earn more).
You need some kind of object decay system in order to implement this,
and the object decay will also guarantee that no other object's value
falls to zero due to overwhelming offer vs. limited demand.
Of course, "indestructible" items should not exist, or be obtainable
only through one-time-only quests.
The second solution has the same problem of rent, i.e. it hits
occasional players. Instead of simply using the object's value
(usually stored in the object prototype) to determine the number of
gold coins it is worth, you renormalize this value to the "total gold"
produced in the universe.
I mean: in a "balanced" universe there are 10^6 gold pieces and a
short sword is worth/costs 4 golds. After a few days of furious
repopping the total amount of gold has risen to 5 * 10^6. The price of
the short sword is now 4 * 5*10^6/10^6 gold pieces, i.e. 20.
The more gold is around, the less its value.
The same should be applied to objects, if the balanced world contains
5000 short swords, then their value will fall as their number
increases. After some time you have all the trivial objects which
costs very little, and the really hard to find (which usually are the
most useful) which become EXTREMELY expensive, giving you an idea of
where to touch to fix things.
Bye,
Alberto
--
Alberto BARSELLA
PGP fingerprint = 13 3F 22 D2 0B 0A D3 25 F1 89 FE B5 82 AD 75 2A
** Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning.
A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing... **
mwi...@my-dejanews.com
sca...@thevortex.com (Scatter) wrote:
> On Thu, 04 Mar 1999 17:46:54 -0500, cerco...@mindspring.com
> (Siobhan) wrote:
>
> >economies on their MU*s. On ours, we've come to something of a glass ceiling
> >in terms of having a use for gold beyond buying a selling equipment. I was
> >hoping those who have had experience with things like player-run shops,
> >player property, trade, or other things might lend us some of your wisdom.
> >We've tried reducing the amount of gold in play, but players still accumulate
> >vast sums due to sheer amount of time spent on the mud. Anyone have some
> >ideas about developing and implementing some more sophisticated economies?
[WOW! A real topic on r.g.m.admin! Who wudda thunkit?]
> The usual model is the 'faucet-drain' where there is a method by which
> value trickles into the world and a method by which it trickles out
> again. Ideally you need to make it trickle out at the same rate it
> trickles in. You have the faucet without the drain - value trickles in
> in the form of equipment loaded into npcs, and is converted into gold
> through selling. There is no drain.
>
> What is needed is a way to pull that value out of the world again,
> something to make players convert that gold into something
> insubstantial - either buying something temporary that can disappear
> and needs to be bought again, or things like services which are
> useful.
The 'faucet-drain' model of mud economies is a common topic on the MUD-Dev
list at kanga.nu, which is a source I'd highly recommend if you're interested
in breaking new ground.
I'm trying something different with an economic system on my new project,
that I hope will clear up some of the underlying problems with typical mud
economies. I think the most basic problem is that we're looking at economics
in a sideways manner in most muds: "value" is a fixed attribute of an object,
expressed in a single form of currency. Our current system at least
addresses the second type: we have different currencies for each of our
cosms, and a currency tracking system that adjusts their exchange rates based
on supply and demand. What I intend to do is to use a similar system to
encompass the whole economy, tracking supply and demand for a large range of
objects and adjusting their value accordingly. I hope that this will level
out the bumps in the faucet-drain system.
My "faucet-drain" model, then, has three parts: the faucet, the drains, and
the tracker (which I've called the Resource Handlers, or RHs). The faucet is
easy to identify - any time an in-game object is cloned. It's the
responsibility of any in-game object to notify the local RH that it has been
created, and passing certain data to the RH: the materials it is made of, and
the mass of each material used.
The drains are any method which remove an in-game object from the game world.
Again, they're not difficult to identify - any time an in-game object is
cleaned up. The drain notifies the local RH of the materials reclaimed by
that drain, if any. For instance, a shop can attempt to "recycle" an item,
trading it back to the RH for it's value in raw materials (probably to clear
shelf space for a more valuable item). The material reclaimed from that is
dependant on the skill of the recycler (i.e. the local blacksmith for a
sword), the axioms of the RH (a higher tech level can recycle more kinds of
materials than a lower one), and a few other factors. Alternately, an
"off-screen cleanup" (removing an object from memory not because it's been
destroyed, but because it's not been touched in too long) credits the RH with
the complete value of it's materials - it's not gone, it's just "off-screen".
That allows the object to be restored in it's last location without making
odd workarounds for the RH.
The RHs are a collection of local economic trackers. They use an abstract
system to track the supply and demand of resources: Instead of trying to
track the total amount of stuff in the world, they define 0 as a balance
between supply and demand, and try to keep the resource totals at 0. A
negative resource means that demand is greater than supply, making values
higher. A positive sum means supply is greater than demand, lowering
resource values. An RH uses it's calculated resource values to "buy" and
"sell" raw materials from the world. (They make a slight profit on each
transaction, preventing players from manipulating the RH into producing
infinite wealth.) When a resource is negative, the RH notifies a class of
AGENT NPCs of it's demand, and they can attempt to obtain that resource from
the environment to sell to the RH. There are a number of types of AGENTs that
I've worked on, from miners to farmers to shepherds to craftsmen. I'm
currently trying to work out systems where players can be agents (that aren't
painfully boring, ridiculously easy or ludicrously profitable).
Similar tracking functions in the RH can be used to track population growth,
which I'm planning to use to allow populations to expand and contract. I'd
been planning to use something simple to figure population growth rates (a
direct correlation to food supply, similar to Civilization), but my wife has
been talking to me about simulations she did in college for bacterial growth.
It sounds interesting.
(There was also a problem I cleared up earlier, where NPCs who have never
been created before have to pay for resources they use during creation with
money they haven't earned yet. Their starting resources and cash have to be
taken as a loss by the RH, representing whatever number of years they were
supported by the society before becoming adults (cheezy, but effective). The
RH draws a low-interest loan from the Bank when it needs cash, and repays
that loan with it's profits from resource sales. The Bank is the object that
determines currency exchange rates - this has been accomplished in the past
by expressing object values in Generic Currency Units (GCU), and tracking
each currency's value in GCU. With multiple currencies associated with
multiple RHs, we can factor in values of the RHs to currency values as well,
like their cash and resource supplies/deficits.)
[Blatant plug: We're still looking for development help for the DS2 project.
If the above sounds like the kind of thing you'd like to help develop and
code, contact me!]
---
Visit us at Dreamshadow today! - dreamer.telmaron.com 3333
http://homestead.dejanews.com/dreamshadow/DreamshadowMain.html
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
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John Adelsberger
: The usual model is the 'faucet-drain' where there is a method by which
: value trickles into the world and a method by which it trickles out
: again.
Between thievery, inflation(keep track of the amount of money that exists
and the amount of goods, and adjust 'values' appropriately,) supply and
demand for particular goods, and a few other neat tricks, you can quickly
make hoarding cash a real challenge. Keep in mind, though, that while
it should not be something everyone can do, it _should_ be possible in
most settings; rarely do you find a civilization without rich people.
--
John J. Adelsberger III
j...@umr.edu
"Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
- Ayn Rand
Siobhan
I am particularly interested in pursuing something along the
lines of what, apparently, Dreamshadow is trying to do.
Namely, trying to generate an economy above and beyond what
the single player will do with him or her self (buying property,
renting eq, repairing eq, etc) and moving it to an interactive
level where we implement some form of mud-wide trade.
I'm sorry to say my ideas are only very roughly formed, but I
was imagining something like, players can find gold mines (for
example) or supply necessary components for various shops.
Although this sounds like a RP kind of thing, I was wondering
if anyone has experience doing this on this larger scale without
the RP necessity?
Anyway, again, thanks for the ideas, they were very helpful in
providing us with a framework for setting up some basics of the
mud economy. As always, more suggestions/discussion are always
welcome and interesting!
Siobhan
Brandon A Downey
Siobhan wrote:
> I am interested in ideas which other admins out there have about generating
> economies on their MU*s. On ours, we've come to something of a glass ceiling
> in terms of having a use for gold beyond buying a selling equipment. I was
> hoping those who have had experience with things like player-run shops,
> player property, trade, or other things might lend us some of your wisdom.
> We've tried reducing the amount of gold in play, but players still accumulate
> vast sums due to sheer amount of time spent on the mud. Anyone have some
> ideas about developing and implementing some more sophisticated economies?
>
Several people have already responded with some excellent suggestions (as well as
an elegant statement of the faucet/drain problem), but I'll chip in with a few
more suggestions.
Things to halt the flow of gold into player hands:
(1) Diminishing returns on mobiles:
Typically mobiles will return repeatedly, with the same amount of gold they
started with.
Combat this by having some sort of a "how many times killed recently" counter, so
that the
more you kill a given mobile, the less gold it returns with.
(2) Finite/Bounded Gold Supply:
Have the gold produced when a mobile dies be proportional to a mud-wide "economy"
variable.
You could even have this be a scale from 0 to 1. Have this variable depend on the
amount of gold
in player hands: The more gold players have in their personal possession (or in a
bank), the less,
on average, mobiles produce. You also probably want a term to account for the
total number of
players (or player levels), so that there you don't suddenly get terminal
deflation just because you
become super popular due to your working economy. :)
(3) Limited equipment:
The best equipment ought to be either finite valued, or appear only at a
frequency dependent on the total number of players (or player levels). This
ensures that if you have a really good sword, you can't just get an infinite
number of copies of it (killing most mobs for equipment is generally an exercise
in patience). Having fifty vorpal swords of dragonslaying can mess up an economy
just as surely as gold messups.
------------------
Things that encourage the flow of gold out of player hands:
(1) Bribable mobiles:
Have intelligent pc's be willing to part with equipment for the right price.
Obviously, you want the price for this to be rather steep -- and you might also
have a class of mobile which charges any more, but happens to be wearing the best
equipment. ("Why fight when you can buy?")
(2) Key spells available for a prices.
Typically, the rarest sort of magical effects are (1) transportation or (2)
healing/protective magic.
You might make a mage who'll take you to a place only accessible magic, or gate
you from city to city, for a suitable fee. "Sanctuary", or any spell that reduces
the damage you take in combat, is a much coveted spell. Remove easy access to
this spell, and make it only available from a potion or from someone who casts
the spell, for a large fee.
(3) Training/teaching of skills/spells.
Make it so that after a certain low level, receiving training for your
skills/spells/stats cost gold. The better the skill, the more it might cost.
Sure, a mage gets to roast his enemies alive -- but it costs 10,000 gp to do the
research, or hire another wizard to teach you. More daringly, you might have a
service that lets people trade gold for xp -- but I'd advise you make it cost
gobs of money, and not implement this until you were actually sure that your gold
supply is stable.
(4) "Entropy"
Anything that causes a player's abilities/skills/other assets to deteriorate with
use, or over time. This includes all the things about armor/equipment needing
repair. It might also involve things like potions of youth for players who've
grown old, or 'supplemental' training to keep your skills from atrophying.
(5) Personalization:
Allow players to build/design their own rooms/houses/castles/keeps/pocket
dimensions for exhorbitant sums of gold. This gives the player the feeling that
he's really a part of the world around him. You might also let him pay for
restringing weapons/armor to be personalized. ("A long steel longsword" might
become "Geoffrey's longsword", etc.)
(6) Socialization:
Since you mention you're not a RP mud, why not have a facility where people can
buy their own channels? Imagine, you pay X gold, get a gem that allows you to
make your own channel, and determine who can use the channel. The channel would
last a finite time, but it'd be a great way for friends far away to communicate
with each other. (Above and beyond "Group tells", which require you to be grouped
with the people you want to talk to). That, or let people run their own tavern
message board for gold, or what have you.
Finally, you should pay some attention to lateral distribution of wealth -- i.e.,
between players. For a vigorous economy, I would definitely a more 'open'
playerkilling system. Most designers discuss the social implications of
playerkilling, but very few take into account the _Economic_ ramifications.
Hoarding too much wealth, in the form of gold, or equipment, makes one a tempting
target, allowing wealth not to become stagnant at any one point in the system.
Being very rich ought to be synonymous with being very skilled, IMHO.
Also, when viewing any sort of economic manipulations, try to think about what
players want, and what they have to trade for it: Basically, any virtual economic
transaction is a tradeoff of player cleverness, or player time, in return for the
things player's mud for (to identify these things, you might want to read Bartle,
who divides players into achieverers, explorers, socializers, and killers..)
Also, I'd be very interested in seeing any sort of economy done in a
ROM/Merc/Diku setting -- it's what I'm most familiar with, and as yet my own
proposals have been theoretical (an economy is something I've planned for my own
MUD, but there are so many other things to do first)
>
> BTW this is not a role playing mud, so aim suggestions towards players who
> are not interested in doing such things.
>
> Thanks in advance =)
> Siobhan
Hopefully, this will help to point the way in terms of directions in which you
can go.
Michael Dearman
Zax
H. McDaniel
>I am interested in ideas which other admins out there have about generating
>economies on their MU*s. On ours, we've come to something of a glass ceiling
>in terms of having a use for gold beyond buying a selling equipment. I was
>hoping those who have had experience with things like player-run shops,
>player property, trade, or other things might lend us some of your wisdom.
>We've tried reducing the amount of gold in play, but players still accumulate
>vast sums due to sheer amount of time spent on the mud. Anyone have some
>ideas about developing and implementing some more sophisticated economies?
>BTW this is not a role playing mud, so aim suggestions towards players who
>are not interested in doing such things.
On one of my MUDs I created a system where every player could obtain a
debit card. This was on a sci-fi/fantasy game. Money entered the system
when players mined asteroids and turned in valuable minerals at an
exchange center. From there money could go into shops or a simulated
stock market. Player owned shops were also available.
The value of ALL items for sell in shops was on a sliding scale. We'd
keep track of the total amount of credits in the game (how much money all
the players have) and the shop prices would adjust for inflation. So
you dont get a situation where things get seriously out of control, but
it's still possible for a few individuals to get rich (difficult, but
possible.)
Another important point: it was not possible for players to simply sell
items to an automated shop and get money in return. They could buy an
item and lose money, they could *trade* an object for another object of
equal or *lesser* value. In the real world there aren't many items you
can sell and get back what you paid for them.
There were a lot of other concepts at work in the game, but I think this
covers what you asked about.
-McDaniel
H. McDaniel
>ROM/Merc/Diku setting -- it's what I'm most familiar with, and as yet my own
>proposals have been theoretical (an economy is something I've planned for my own
>MUD, but there are so many other things to do first)
The problem with many MUDs is that there's nothing really worthy of your
purse once you become filthy rich. I wouldn't want everyone in my MUD to
be filthy rich mind you, but there should be some incentive for having all
that cash that doesn't involve buying the equivalent of 10 million
McDonald's cheese burgers. That would also nicely encourage players with
huge wads of cash to blow them on big ticket items or to keep that money
out of circulation while they're saving up for the big house on the hill.
Comments?
-McDaniel
tel...@xenon.triode.net.au
> Brandon A Downey <bado...@sprynet.com> writes:
> >ROM/Merc/Diku setting -- it's what I'm most familiar with, and as yet my own
> >proposals have been theoretical (an economy is something I've planned for my own
> >MUD, but there are so many other things to do first)
> The problem with many MUDs is that there's nothing really worthy of your
> purse once you become filthy rich. I wouldn't want everyone in my MUD to
> be filthy rich mind you, but there should be some incentive for having all
> that cash that doesn't involve buying the equivalent of 10 million
> McDonald's cheese burgers. That would also nicely encourage players with
> huge wads of cash to blow them on big ticket items or to keep that money
> out of circulation while they're saving up for the big house on the hill.
I was toying with the concept of ``finery'' which is a score that applies
to items and the score basically determines the reaction that the wearer
gets from other people who see the item being worn. Thus, a character who
has an aggregate finery score of 0-10 would look like a beggar, a score
of 10-100 would look like a peasant, a score of 100-1000 would look like
a respectable citizen, 1000-10000 would look like a minor nobleman, etc.
This would alter the way MOBs react to characters. Low finery scores
would make guards push the character around while with high finery
scores the player would get bows and nods from officials.
Depending on the guild, there may be guild rooms that have minimum dress
requirements (mind you this could go both ways, an overdressed monk
might be spurned by his guild).
Finery would also be easy to damage, very expensive and you can even
introduce the concept of fashion so that some items can `clash' with
others and reduce each others score when worn together. Naturally tailors
only make new items in the latest fashion so when you buy a new item you
have to replace all your existing items too.
In essence, it is a useless item that everyone has to have because
everyone else has one -- just the thing to keep a modern economy ticking
over. Also, you can allow players some latitude in the creation of tailor
made finery so they get to make their own fancy outfits.
- Tel
Brandon A Downey
"H. McDaniel" wrote:
> Brandon A Downey <bado...@sprynet.com> writes:
>
> >ROM/Merc/Diku setting -- it's what I'm most familiar with, and as yet my own
> >proposals have been theoretical (an economy is something I've planned for my own
> >MUD, but there are so many other things to do first)
>
> The problem with many MUDs is that there's nothing really worthy of your
> purse once you become filthy rich. I wouldn't want everyone in my MUD to
> be filthy rich mind you, but there should be some incentive for having all
> that cash that doesn't involve buying the equivalent of 10 million
> McDonald's cheese burgers. That would also nicely encourage players with
> huge wads of cash to blow them on big ticket items or to keep that money
> out of circulation while they're saving up for the big house on the hill.
>
Giving out things to use gold _for_ shouldn't be that hard -- just set powerful
weapons for sale in shops, and remove that lame code that requires you to be of a
certain level to buy/use it. That by itself should generate a tremendous use for
gold.
The reason you don't normally see this, though, is that people haven't solved the
more difficult half of the problem, which is producing something less than an
infinite supply of gold. (Typically, once you become sufficiently power, you can just
rake in the gold, limited only by the amount of time you want to spend).
I'm guessing a lot of people are reticent to make powerful things you can get with
gold, as most mud economies are so out of whack in the first place.
mwi...@my-dejanews.com
Brandon A Downey <bado...@sprynet.com> wrote:
> Things that encourage the flow of gold out of player hands:
>
> (1) Bribable mobiles:
> Have intelligent pc's be willing to part with equipment for the right price.
> Obviously, you want the price for this to be rather steep -- and you might
> also have a class of mobile which charges any more, but happens to be wearing
> the best equipment. ("Why fight when you can buy?")
Another thing to keep in mind is the option of bribing guardian NPCs for
access to areas. The guard in front of a door might take a conveniently
timed break or the local locksmith might be tempted to duplicate a key for
the right sum, and gangs of brigands might decide to stake out a
well-travelled road and charge a toll for safe passage. It's safer to pay
them than to fight them. (The feasability of this depends on your combat
system. Mine is being balanced such that two opponents are usually more
fearsome than a single opponent twice as strong. I realize this is *quite* a
departure from typical AD&D based mud combat systems.)
> (2) Key spells available for a prices.
>
> Typically, the rarest sort of magical effects are (1) transportation or (2)
> healing/protective magic. You might make a mage who'll take you to a place
> only accessible magic, or gate you from city to city, for a suitable fee.
> "Sanctuary", or any spell that reduces the damage you take in combat, is a
> much coveted spell. Remove easy access to this spell, and make it only
> available from a potion or from someone who casts the spell, for a large fee.
I suppose you're making the same point about transportation magic that I made
above with using money to gain area access. Same effect, using different
paths to get there.
Healing is a wonderful way to take money out of a system. So are other forms
of magic. One of our magical systems will offer mages a way to purchase
items that have been imbued with mana, and channel that mana to power their
magic. Essentially, they can buy spell points. With our economy system and a
limit to the speed at which mana-imbued items can be produced, we've just
about guaranteed that there will *always* be a demand for mana items, and the
prices will skyrocket. *evil grin*
I've also thought about using healing to drain money. In our current system
a common complaint is that healing is slow. It is, and it's compounded by
the fact that the more damage you've taken, the slower your healing rate is.
Instead of speeding up healing, I've thought about slowing it down even
further, and offering easy magical, spiritual and high-tech methods to heal
quickly. For a price, of course. The price shouldn't be exhorbitant: it
should be low enough to keep players coming back, but high enough to act as a
effective drain.
> (3) Training/teaching of skills/spells.
>
> Make it so that after a certain low level, receiving training for your
> skills/spells/stats cost gold. The better the skill, the more it might cost.
> Sure, a mage gets to roast his enemies alive -- but it costs 10,000 gp to do
> the research, or hire another wizard to teach you. More daringly, you might
> have a service that lets people trade gold for xp -- but I'd advise you make
> it cost gobs of money, and not implement this until you were actually sure
> that your gold supply is stable.
We're getting rid of XPs for the most part, and so I'm working on a setup
where *all* training costs gold. Useage is the only way to raise skills, and
a "trainer" is a skilled NPC who charges money to let you practice your
skills on him. Since he is highly skilled, you stand a better chance of
gaining skill points against them, and they're much safer than practicing
those skills against someone of equal talent in the real world. You've paid
them a sizable sum not to kill you. In addition, trainers charge a standard
fee for a practice session, but your chances of gaining skill against them
decrease as your skill approaches theirs.
> (4) "Entropy"
>
> Anything that causes a player's abilities/skills/other assets to deteriorate
> with use, or over time. This includes all the things about armor/equipment
> needing repair. It might also involve things like potions of youth for players
> who've grown old, or 'supplemental' training to keep your skills from
> atrophying.
>
> (5) Personalization:
>
> Allow players to build/design their own rooms/houses/castles/keeps/pocket
> dimensions for exhorbitant sums of gold. This gives the player the feeling
> that he's really a part of the world around him. You might also let him pay
> for restringing weapons/armor to be personalized. ("A long steel longsword"
> might become "Geoffrey's longsword", etc.)
Here's an idea: Combine (4) and (5).
Instead of a single lump sum to purchase player real estate, have a lower
lump sum and ongoing expenses. Take a hint from the real world: The
purchase price of a house is quite a bit out of range of most people's
available funds. So they take out a loan, mortgaging the house in order to
get the funds to purchase it. That lowers the money that a player needs
*right now* to a reasonable sum. That's called the "down payment". (In the
US, that's typically a few thousand dollars, as opposed to an average of a
hundred thousand dollar purchase price. It's much lower in some parts of the
world, and much higher in others.)
In exchange, they pay interest to the bank over a long period of time,
typically 30 years. Over the life of a 30 year loan, the total combined
principle and interest payments made usually work out to 2.5 to 3 *times* the
amount of the original loan. (That's assuming no fees or penalties, no
prepayments, and an interest rate in the neighborhood of 5% to 10%. I work
for a mortgage wholesaler, and I've not seen rates lower than 4% or higher
than 9.5% in the past few years.)
In addition to the mortgage, property owners have to pay taxes, insurance,
utilities, maintenance and repairs, and assorted other costs. Owning a home
is a major and ongoing expense, not a single lump sum payment. Use that to
your advantage!
My system is being designed to allow player owned houses, apartments, and
shops. I want to encourage players to have a home, and I'm taking a clue from
George Carlin to do it: A house is a "place to keep your stuff". If players
can typically carry X amount of equipment, add in enough useful extras so
that players generally *want* about 4X amount of equipment. So they need a
place to keep the rest. Homes are pretty safe (and added security is
available, for a price) and possibly have other social advantages, so players
want a home. You can choose between an apartment, which has a set cost per
year, is never paid off, and has pretty severe limits on the modifications
you can make, or you can buy a house. It's a pretty big initial investment,
plus yearly payments as high or higher than an apartment, but there's the
promise of ownership: Someday you will be done making payments, you can
change it around as much as you'd like, and in many places it gives you an
added status in the community. A shop is like a home, but sectioned off into
a sales area and a stockroom. Security is even more of an issue there, and
the added expenses of paying employees, purchasing stock, paying sales and
income taxes, and buying proper licenses may or may not be overcome by the
income generated by the shop. You can forego the expense a seperate home and
live in an apartment over your store if you choose, but that quickly eats
into precious storeroom space.
In any case, try to focus the player's ire into the game, rather than against
the administration, by presenting their expenses as legitimate parts of the
world.
> (6) Socialization:
>
> Since you mention you're not a RP mud, why not have a facility where people
> can buy their own channels? Imagine, you pay X gold, get a gem that allows you
> to make your own channel, and determine who can use the channel. The channel
> would last a finite time, but it'd be a great way for friends far away to
> communicate with each other. (Above and beyond "Group tells", which require
> you to be grouped with the people you want to talk to). That, or let people
> run their own tavern message board for gold, or what have you.
Or have social functions that use for money: A bard or jukebox that plays
requested music for a few coins, tavern games (darts? poker?) where players
compete for a pool (minus a 5% fee for the establishment, of course), etc.
> Finally, you should pay some attention to lateral distribution of wealth --
> i.e., between players. For a vigorous economy, I would definitely a more
> 'open' playerkilling system. Most designers discuss the social implications of
> playerkilling, but very few take into account the _Economic_ ramifications.
> Hoarding too much wealth, in the form of gold, or equipment, makes one a
> tempting target, allowing wealth not to become stagnant at any one point in
> the system. Being very rich ought to be synonymous with being very skilled,
> IMHO.
On a somewhat related note, what about bounty hunting as a commercial venture?
With the right political contacts, a "official bounty hunter guild" could be
established, accepting bounties on criminals and paying off hunters. The
contributions would be charged an "administrative fee", and wannabe bounty
hunters have to purchase a membership licence and pay dues. Perhaps somebody
with a bounty on their head can even buy off the bounty, by making an equal or
greater contribution themselves.
> Also, when viewing any sort of economic manipulations, try to think about what
> players want, and what they have to trade for it: Basically, any virtual
> economic transaction is a tradeoff of player cleverness, or player time, in
> return for the things player's mud for (to identify these things, you might
> want to read Bartle, who divides players into achieverers, explorers,
> socializers, and killers..)
Very true. What players really "spend" on our games is attention. They're
willing to exchange all sorts of in-game tokens to increase their ratio of
entertainment per unit of attention. The trick is discovering what your
players consider entertaining. (Bartle's "Players Who Suit Muds" is a good
place to start, as is watching them yourself.)
Aaron Neerenberg
mwi...@my-dejanews.com wrote in article
<7c3nn3$obe$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
True. Then again, the moment someone makes an attractive target, they
start offloading stuff onto storage characters.
Geoff Wong
>more difficult half of the problem, which is producing something less than an
>infinite supply of gold. (Typically, become sufficiently power, you can just
>rake in the gold, limited only by the amount of time you want to spend).
>I'm guessing reticent to make powerful things you can get with
>gold, as most mud economies are so out of whack in the first place.
This is pretty much the problem with virtually every mud I've seen that
has an economy. The supply of gold (coins/money/whatever) is
effectively uncontrolled and unlimited. The money is just *created* out
of nowhere and stuck on monsters (etc). Many methods have be suggested
in this thread for controlling the supply of money but they're all just
artificial restrictions on the economy which don't address the actual
problem of unrestrained gold creation. Or in the cash of "faucets" and
"drains" requires a tricky balancing act that is easily thrown out of
whack by clever players.
Money exists to facilitate the transaction of goods and effort between
players (NPCs/etc). If your money supply is uncontrolled then you
effectively have infinite inflation. This is because there is
continually more units for money for the same amount of effort/goods;
money itself becomes worth less and less as there is more and more of
it created. Fixed price shops (which many muds have) become more and
more out of date with each passing hour. Player controlled pricing
goes some way to addressing the pricing problem; but not the infinite
inflation problems.
At Shattered World [1] we've been effectively running a "Loans Standard
Economy" [2] (or "zero-sum" economy) for many years now (6 or so years
- I forget now :). A key feature of this economy is all prices and all
transactions are controlled by players (ie. there are no fixed priced
shops, goods, properties, whatever in the realm, players control all
pricing).
The "Loans Standard Economy" can be described as a zero sum economy.
That is the total outstanding loans always equals the total amount of
money in use in the economy. The can be simply stated as:
Bank Loans = Bank Deposits + Currency
This applies throughout the entire economy, in our case a mud. Hence
the bank is in control of the money in the economy by controlling the
amount of money it lends (to players). Originally the bank loans were
controlled very strictly; but it required significant amounts of work.
Now bank loans are controlled by player owned banks and the only
"central" control we administer is setting the loan limits on the
player owned banks. Most of this is secured by the value of the
property owned by the loaning player anyway (especially the bank
itself). Typically bank owners loan large amounts if it's secured
against a property or potential property purchase (they can reclaimed
and sold if loans are not repayed). Small loans are generally given to
reliable *real* players (not 2nd chars etc). Because an actual person
is assessing the risk (at their own risk); a reasonable job is done of
loaning money.
Effectively this means the money supply grows and shrinks according to
player demand for money. It is not inflationary because more money
isn't simply continually "printed" (created) as in most muds. As all
prices are determined by players; money actually reflects the effort of
obtaining goods (and the goods themselves) within the mud. Shop owners
don't need to continually adjust their prices because there is not
run-away inflation (indeed there are regular periods of deflation).
This creates a give and take situation where the players circulate the money
by buying houses, shops and items to sell in those shops, with the aim of
making money. Other players buy items from these shops to get a flow
of money around the economy such that the money being paid out equals
the money being gained. Wizards also participate in the economy as
banking entities for their creations. If a wizard wants a monster to
have cash (as a reward) then that wizard needs to collect cash in some
manner. If the wizard doesn't have the cash then the monster doesn't
get the cash either. Wizards also don't create items endlessly of out
of nothing; they purchase the items from shops in the realm (if the
prices are reasonable!). This allows all creation of goods (except
unique magical items) to be also controlled by players too. This also
allows the establishment of a resource base and ecology to support this
goods creation.
Anyway - there are lots of interesting areas of implementation this
opens up. The first step to implementing this is to control the
creation of money. All money needs to be created (and monitored)
through a central bank (a simple server object in the mud will do). The
standard money object needs to be disabled so wizards can't just
created money, but need to use the central bank to do this. This allows
you (as the administrator) to monitor the flow of money; typically
you'll see lots of wizards going into debt. You can then encourage them
to actually collect as well as give out money; perhaps even cap their
maximum debt.
The second step is to scrap all fixed price shops and replace them with
shops which have buy/sell prices fixed by players.
The next step is to create a system where players can loan/borrow money
to actually "create" money in the economy. As players do this more and
more often; their becomes less reason for wizards to loan money (if
they're effective at collecting money; or rewrite their realms not to
give out cash). After this their are a number of steps that you may
take. Of interest is intergrating a resource/production model into your
economy.
Anyway - it's some work - but for us it has paid off handsomely saving
us lots and lots of economic headaches. It has also allowed us to
monitor what is happening in the world in a way that was not previously
possible.
Geoff Wong
aka Dredd@Shattered World
---- References.
[1] Shattered World - http://www.shattered.org
telnet://shattered.org
[2] L.M. Goldschlager and R. Baxter, (1992), "The Evolution of a Pure
Credit Monetary System", Monash University, Melbourne, Australia,
presented at 21st Conference of Economists, Melbourne, July 1992.
mwi...@my-dejanews.com
"Aaron Neerenberg" <aaronx.n...@intel.com> wrote:
> True. Then again, the moment someone makes an attractive target, they
> start offloading stuff onto storage characters.
"Storage Characters" - Hmm, an interesting problem. We consider it
acceptable for one player to have multiple characters; in fact, we encourage
it because we feel that the game is a different enough experience when played
with dramatically different characters that we don't want to lock players
into a single character forever. What we don't permit is for players to use
multiple characters to assist each other, because that opens up a lot of game
balance issues - storage characters, mules, and other abuses of multi-char
playing make the game less fun for all.
I posted in another thread that I was interested in different ways of guarding
against multi-char abuses...Hopefully we'll get some response there.