Inflation (on Dikus)
Ajax
problem. The response I have for this is: YES!!!
The reason is intuitively obvious even to the most casual observer --- when
a mobile recreates itself whole from nothingness, it also creates more
coinage. So the amount of money in the game goes up and up and up.
A REAL cool solution would be to have the prices in the shops go up as the
game realizes there is more coinage floating around. One drawback in
this scenario (and it's a big one) would be that the newbies (who don't
have all the extra money) log in to find recalls costing 10K apiece.
The cash isn't evenly distributed, which makes this inherently unfair,
(even tho it IS just like real life. :)
A pretty brilliant "temporary" solution was come up with by one of the Imps
of JediMUD: he sold off a pretty powerful, incredibly rare item to the
highest bidder. Presto change-o, seven million coins out of the game.
An intrepid Immortal duplicated this feat using all of his "old" eq
(Jedi has just gone through an equipment downgrade, and the dust hasn't
settled yet), and disposed of another 11 million.
Anybody got any other ideas on how to deal with MUDflation? :)
--- Ajax, AKA Dyrewulf, God of Chaos and Anarchy.
Eric L. Pilcher
>The reason is intuitively obvious even to the most casual observer --- when
> a mobile recreates itself whole from nothingness, it also creates more
> coinage. So the amount of money in the game goes up and up and up.
This is an easy fix and one I'd like to see. Certain mobs wouldn't usually
carry cash, so why should they in the game. I mean, how many small dogs
have you seen walking around with $10 bills? The only mobs that should
carry money are the ones that are either based on beings that would carry
money if they really existed, and those that have happened to drag bodies
into a pile and left them their, not caring about the loot on them. (In
which case, the coins would be left in the lair, not on the mob)
Now, before I get flamed for saying that, I want to say that I know Fidos
are not the reason for inflation. However stone golems with ~4750 gc or
so does get a bit rediculous. Especially in muds that have expanded to
greater levels where you have lev-60 mobs with 500k coins.
>A REAL cool solution would be to have the prices in the shops go up as the
> game realizes there is more coinage floating around. One drawback in
> this scenario (and it's a big one) would be that the newbies (who don't
> have all the extra money) log in to find recalls costing 10K apiece.
This is a really good idea actually, and would work fine. Even though this,
as is, would be harsh on the newbies. All you have to do to protect
the nebies is to set a price ceiling for certain items that newbies need.
>A pretty brilliant "temporary" solution was come up with by one of the Imps
> of JediMUD: he sold off a pretty powerful, incredibly rare item to the
> highest bidder. Presto change-o, seven million coins out of the game.
> An intrepid Immortal duplicated this feat using all of his "old" eq
> (Jedi has just gone through an equipment downgrade, and the dust hasn't
> settled yet), and disposed of another 11 million.
I'd hardly call that 'brilliant' as money was only removed from a couple
players and both probably had 10* that ammount to begin with.
>Anybody got any other ideas on how to deal with MUDflation? :)
Well, the easiest one is ofter refered to as 'rent'. This is a feature
that most players hate, unfortunately. Also, it has to be set up properly
for it to work.
It should be based on the items the player owns, not the level of the player.
This is a good idea for 2 reasons. First, it preserves character level
and equipment balance. A newbie isn't going to rent with the best weapon
in the game becuase he/she won't be able to afford it. Second of all, it
cuts down on 'equipment inflation' which I tend to think is far worse than
gold inflation. Players are only going to rent with what they really need.
No more of this carrying around 3 kits! (one for damage) (one for mana) and
(one for protection) oh, make that 4 (one for hit points). This also
cuts down on potion hoarding as well, and you've got no more pesky rent
characters to worry about.
Rent does cause a few problems though. Namely, if a player is gone a long
time and runs out of cash to pay, then they lose all their stuff.
A good compromise to this might be allowing a player to rent his/her 5 most
valueable objects for free and then charging rent thereafter. This will
ensure that a player always have some equipment no matter what.
-Rasta @ kallisti (tiegan.cs.orst.edu or 128.193.32.20 4000)
--
-Eric L. Pilcher gt7...@prism.gatech.edu
Your next article key explodes in the face of the Article.| "I'm in trouble
The Article is dead! R.I.P. | for the things I
You hear a horrible cry of agony from the Article. | havn't got to yet."
Ajax
>>A REAL cool solution would be to have the prices in the shops go up as the
>> game realizes there is more coinage floating around. One drawback in
>> this scenario (and it's a big one) would be that the newbies (who don't
>> have all the extra money) log in to find recalls costing 10K apiece.
>This is a really good idea actually, and would work fine. Even though this,
>as is, would be harsh on the newbies. All you have to do to protect
>the nebies is to set a price ceiling for certain items that newbies need.
Well, the problem with that is this: what gets sold in Midgaard that
higher-levels need and newbies don't? The only thing I can think of
offhand is sanctuary potions, which many MUDs either A) don't offer
for sale, or B) stopped selling when they realized that coinage was
too easy to come by. :)
Things like bread, recalls, the cheapo armor and weaponry people end
up having to buy if they can't whine their way into a DT reimb...those
things aren't eligible for price increases if we take for granted that
we can't gouge the newbies just because the high-levels are bankrolled
to hell and back again. So what can we raise? Any ideas? :)
>>A pretty brilliant "temporary" solution was come up with by one of the Imps
>> of JediMUD: he sold off a pretty powerful, incredibly rare item to the
>> highest bidder. Presto change-o, seven million coins out of the game.
>> An intrepid Immortal duplicated this feat using all of his "old" eq
>> (Jedi has just gone through an equipment downgrade, and the dust hasn't
>> settled yet), and disposed of another 11 million.
>I'd hardly call that 'brilliant' as money was only removed from a couple
>players and both probably had 10* that ammount to begin with.
Well, maybe it wasn't THAT great. What I liked best about it is that
it specifically targeted the people who had way too much money, which
was something we hadn't been able to figure out how to do before. Aside
from rent, MUD player characters have almost no expenses. (Bread and
water wouldn't keep ME in fighting form for weeks at a time!) Your
average MUDder doesn't role-play all that much (apologies and blessings
to those MUDders who DO role-play :), so they're unlikely to spend any
cash on anything they don't need to A) fight, or B) stay alive.
Real people don't do this. Real people also get poor. But I can't think
of a way to make MUDpeople want to spend their money on "luxuries" w/o
giving them some kind of combat bonus for it. Then again, consider a
form of expensive food items (let's call them Mystic Pizzas, shall we?)
that give you the equivalent of a bless spell when eaten. Or something
similar. You can control their abuse by A) making them filling, so that
they can't rack up the bonuses by gorging on pizza, and B) having them
disintegrate over time, so you have to eat 'em soon after they're
bought. Either or both of these would work.
As an aside, the 7 meg sale described above actually took money from
an entire clan of individuals, each putting in a sizeable part of their
personal fortunes. They got it all back soon, however. :)
>Well, the easiest one is ofter refered to as 'rent'. This is a feature
>that most players hate, unfortunately. Also, it has to be set up properly
>for it to work.
>It should be based on the items the player owns, not the level of the player.
>This is a good idea for 2 reasons. First, it preserves character level
>and equipment balance. A newbie isn't going to rent with the best weapon
>in the game becuase he/she won't be able to afford it. Second of all, it
>cuts down on 'equipment inflation' which I tend to think is far worse than
>gold inflation. Players are only going to rent with what they really need.
>No more of this carrying around 3 kits! (one for damage) (one for mana) and
>(one for protection) oh, make that 4 (one for hit points). This also
>cuts down on potion hoarding as well, and you've got no more pesky rent
>characters to worry about.
These are pretty standard, in fact every Diku I've seen with a rent
system does exactly this. It doesn't seem to help much. :( People
bitch about the 30 item limits, about the high cost of items that
they SHOULD be able to get (a 25th level can reasonably be expected
to use a Tbolt, but a 25th level mage can't necessarily kill enough
every day to keep it), and about other more sundry things.
Also, it's difficult to make item-rent limits stick. Most people will
just make a "storage character" to hang on to their extra kits if they
aren't allowed to rent that many. Since this is damned hard to detect,
there's not much that can be done about it. ;)
>Rent does cause a few problems though. Namely, if a player is gone a long
>time and runs out of cash to pay, then they lose all their stuff.
>A good compromise to this might be allowing a player to rent his/her 5 most
>valueable objects for free and then charging rent thereafter. This will
>ensure that a player always have some equipment no matter what.
This rankles at me for some reason. Granted, you shouldn't force people
to play your MUD every day, but giving them their "favorite five" for
free will REALLY cut down on rent costs. But, since I can't think of
a better solution, at least not now, I guess I'll just shut up. :)
Anybody running a Diku with no inflation problem care to share the
secret with the rest of us? :)
Mitchell Tse
>In article <C52tp...@news.cso.uiuc.edu> aber...@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu (Ajax) writes:
>> a mobile recreates itself whole from nothingness, it also creates more
>> coinage.
>This is an easy fix and one I'd like to see. Certain mobs wouldn't usually
>carry cash, so why should they in the game.
We thought of that too, so for Merc 2.0Beta, we made it so that most mobs
won't have money. Only mobs who are loaded with ITEM_MONEY will actually
have cash on them. The repurcussions from this? Explained below.
>>A REAL cool solution would be to have the prices in the shops go up as the
>> game realizes there is more coinage floating around. One drawback in
>> this scenario (and it's a big one) would be that the newbies (who don't
>> have all the extra money) log in to find recalls costing 10K apiece.
Although this is controversial to most, we have decided that anyone above 5th
level can afford all the recall scrolls he wants, so in Merc Muds, all recalls
are free. Also, since the fountain fills your thirst, and there are body
parts to eat, and rent is free, money has become a luxury in Merc 2.0Beta,
not a necessity.
>>Anybody got any other ideas on how to deal with MUDflation? :)
>Well, the easiest one is ofter refered to as 'rent'.
Again, since we charge no rent, anyone can have as long a vacation from
mudding as they like, since they are charged nothing for not mudding.
Also, money is obtained for selling items, but since the price of items is
algorithm based (with relatively small values), there should not be much
free money flying around, since there are luxury expenses, like identify
scrolls, food and drink, and money as a means of exchange. Of course, if
money is still way too high, our nice Midgaard tax collectors (i.e. mobs
with spec_thief) will hopefully take care of that.
Hatchet
Merc
Mitchell Tse
some 9600 or 14.4k's nowadays...Oh, well]
In article <C535n...@news.cso.uiuc.edu> aber...@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu (Ajax) writes:
>gt7...@prism.gatech.EDU (Eric L. Pilcher) writes:
> form of expensive food items (let's call them Mystic Pizzas, shall we?)
> that give you the equivalent of a bless spell when eaten. Or something
> similar. You can control their abuse by A) making them filling, so that
> they can't rack up the bonuses by gorging on pizza, and B) having them
> disintegrate over time, so you have to eat 'em soon after they're
> bought. Either or both of these would work.
Good idea, actually, although I think Mystic Pizza is an official pizza chain
somewhere in the midwest already, must think of something else... 8)
> These are pretty standard, in fact every Diku I've seen with a rent
> system does exactly this. It doesn't seem to help much. :( People
> bitch about the 30 item limits, about the high cost of items that
> they SHOULD be able to get (a 25th level can reasonably be expected
> to use a Tbolt, but a 25th level mage can't necessarily kill enough
> every day to keep it), and about other more sundry things.
Again, the idea of free rent removes this problem.
> Also, it's difficult to make item-rent limits stick. Most people will
> just make a "storage character" to hang on to their extra kits if they
> aren't allowed to rent that many. Since this is damned hard to detect,
> there's not much that can be done about it. ;)
Actually, it's very easy to fix this problem, by doing something that cures
another problem too. However, again, this idea is still quite controversial
to the Mud community. In Merc, all items are assigned level levels. If the
item level is higher than your level, you can't wear or wield it. This solves
too much hand me downs of items way too powerful. True, you can still be
handed down that neato thunderbolt without ever visiting Olympus, but at
least, you have to get to the level to wield it. Now, in Merc2.0Beta, if you
can't use the item, you also can't save it. There, no more storage characters.
Unless, of course, you decide to make a level 15 storage char to hold your
neato 15th level wand of lightning, for example.
> This rankles at me for some reason. Granted, you shouldn't force people
> to play your MUD every day...
I agree with you completely! Some of us actually work and/or go to school!
8)
> ... But, since I can't think of
> a better solution, at least not now, I guess I'll just shut up. :)
No, please don't shut up. I like this thread so far. Very peaceful and
constructive, not to mention necessary.
> Anybody running a Diku with no inflation problem care to share the
> secret with the rest of us? :)
Actually, it's BECAUSE we have such an inflation problem with Merc 1.0 that
we designed these measures. I just hope it'll fly.
> --- Ajax, AKA Dyrewulf, God of Chaos and Anarchy.
Hatchet
Merc Industries
Tony Sarno
>Somebody in some post mentioned something about MUDs having an inflation
> problem. The response I have for this is: YES!!!
[stuff deleated]
>Anybody got any other ideas on how to deal with MUDflation? :)
Well, the mud I am desinging has quite a few fixes to this problem. I
didn't realize it was a problem, but I am glad that by mud has already
fixed this. :)
One of the solutions which will exist on my mud is taxes. I was planning
on having property (land) taxes, but since this problem exists, income
tax may also be in order.
So, what do you all think about having income tax on a mud?
mic...@webworm.berkeley.edu
Look at this as a problem in economics. The problem is that there is no
market.
There are shopkeepers, but they just bring extremely simple number-in-a-file
preferences to the marketplace. Ideally, I think ALL transactions should
take place because some PLAYER, somewhere, thought it was worth NNN gold
pieces to buy an item. No buyers --> no market demand --> no price for,
say, the 500th lamia dagger brought into town.
Thus in this system mobiles could serve as brokers, factors, or auctioneers,
but they would never buy or sell equipment on their OWN account, just serve
as a buffer for player-generated demands.
Furey
Merc Industries
mic...@webworm.berkeley.edu
Tony Sarno
>have you seen walking around with $10 bills? The only mobs that should
>carry money are the ones that are either based on beings that would carry
>money if they really existed, and those that have happened to drag bodies
>into a pile and left them their, not caring about the loot on them. (In
>which case, the coins would be left in the lair, not on the mob)
>Now, before I get flamed for saying that, I want to say that I know Fidos
>are not the reason for inflation. However stone golems with ~4750 gc or
This is not a flame. Just thought I would start off that way. There is
a good (?) reason for fidos running around with $10. Fido's are about
the only thing newbies can kill alone on some muds. I know there have
been times when I was a newbie that I was thankfull fidos had that
$10 stuffed in thier jowels. :) Or at least I hope that that is where
the $10 was, I would hate to think I was sticking my hand in other
parts of his anatomy to get my $10. That would not be worth $10. :)
[stuff deleted]
> ...Second of all, it
>cuts down on 'equipment inflation' which I tend to think is far worse than
>gold inflation... [more stuff deleted]
Hmmm.... I hadn't thought too much about equipment inflation. I will
have to be sure to include a fix for that in my mud. I can think of
a couple solutions.
1) Limit the amout of things someone can carry.
There are usually ways around this, and there will be many new and interesting
ways around this on my mud. This will probably no work on my mud.
2) Have mob thieves (good ones) who steal extra equipment, then junk it.
I think that this will work on my mud, but I could use any other suggestions
for controlling equipment inflation. Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
And a special thanks to the poster of this article for bringing up the subject.
Marko J. Laakso
my last post, lets see if i can do it again...
MUDflation occurs because of the following:
1) Shops sell crappy eq that no-one wants
2) Players get a good item from a mob. They already have this item.
They try and sell it. Everyone else already has this item. The
Imps look around. Everyone has every good item on the game. Hmm.
3) Players continue to kill, get cash of mobs, but nothing to spend
it on. (These are the same people who bitch about rent - oh and
not forgetting the newbies who complain they cant rent a complete
set of total-invulnerability plate-mail)
4) Need I go on?
Solution:
Note: This is my solution, you will either love it or hate it. If you
hate it, I'd like to know why.
NO ZONE RESETS
Ok, let me clarify that a little:
1) Mobs and objects are constantly saved, just like players. (No,
CPU usage doesnt go through the roof; ok it's a little higher
than standard, but lets face it, if the machine isnt using 100%
then it's being wasted *grin*)
2) MUD crashes, game resets to where it was. Some zones will self-
generate, not reset, self-generate. There is a difference, I'm
sure you dont need me to spell it out. If a group wipes out an
Orc town, then it stays deserted, until the Gods, or as I shall
refer to them - GameMasters, repopulate it. (See below 4 more)
3) Good - not Mega - eq is available from shops! Shopkeepers will
refuse to buy stuff they produce. They will also refuse to buy
items they have more than a couple of, except REAL good eq.
4) Mega eq is not NECESSARY to play the game. (After all with 200
mortal levels, and technically no immortals except for the few
GameMasters, there is a LOT more to the MUD than hack-n-slash)
Personalised items will be given out as quest rewards. These
may have a nice modifier, but will not be Super-eq. (More below)
5) Tax. Players will have to build their own home, otherwise they
have nowhere to live (and rent gets damn expensive after level
10 *smirk*).
6) Players will not be able to carry around more than 50k money.
(Where do they keep it all anyway?) No Banks - simply didnt
exist - therefore they will have to either spend their money,
or maybe entrust it to their Church/Guild etc.
See - no MUDflation.
Ok, additional points...
GameMasters will spend their time acting like D&D DMs. There is no
need to re-imburse anything, and since GM-Mortal communication will
be anonymous (via NPC GODs) there will be no GMs sat on their arses
chatting all night so they can actually do what GMs/Gods are MEANT
to do - make mortals lives interesting. This will mean having to
re-populate deserted areas (all wld/mob/obj editing is done on-line,
it will be virtually impossible to do off-line since there are a LOT
of flags to set on most things, although some are defaulted - NPC
takes about 3 minutes to create though, not very long) and running
quests, not the 6 hour type thank god.
Mega eq is NOT necessary to a MUD. The problem with most DIKUs which
have MUDflation is that players have nothing to spend their money on,
and there are weapons which do 5d5 damage, compared to shop weapons
which do 1d8 damage. Its called balance. There is no need for every
player to have Super-eq, providing what they can get is sufficient to
help them accomplish their task. I dont want people to be level 10
inside of 30 minutes, because they will have no idea how to play the
game, only how to follow a level 50 and sit down whilst the level 50
kills the Mayor... I want them to learn as they play, with eq that
is minimal (until higher levels are reached, then they can think about
wielding 5d5 weapons *grin* they'll need 'em)
I've rambled enough again...
******************************************************************************
* Mike Harrold * For those of you confused, I use the above account for *
* York, England * access to net-news. There is no MUD at that address :) *
******************************************************************************
Geoff A. Cohen
Yeah, Kaspelheim had shops whose prices varied according to supply and
demand. This necessitated saving inventories of shops to a file, and
in large part worked pretty well once the bugs were ironed out (a painful
process).
There are other solutions to inflation. The simplest and easiest is to
define a global variable M2, which is the amount of free gold. This
increases with rent money, some portion of shop money (to simulate the
velocity of money), and decreases whenever mobs are loaded with cash.
(And yes, only mobs that have an excuse for cash should have it - others
have treasure that can be sold to a supply/demand ruled shop).
Every mud month, M2 increases according to whatever the calculated GNP -
umm... GMP?... is, probably a zillion percent for muds, considering the
reset rate in most places.
These are only the first steps of implementing a more real economy. I'd
like to see shops actually manufacture items based on other factors.
Geoff Cohen
Congressional Budget Office
The Astra Project
Naved A. Surve
> it specifically targeted the people who had way too much money, which
> was something we hadn't been able to figure out how to do before. Aside
>
> As an aside, the 7 meg sale described above actually took money from
> an entire clan of individuals, each putting in a sizeable part of their
> personal fortunes. They got it all back soon, however. :)
I don't know what you imagine the average fortune a JediMUD player collects,
but 7 mil coins from even a single person, let alone a clan is pretty
negligible. I'm sure you have seen the auction go to 20 mil on rare eq like
the OLD Thunderbolt. I personally can bring in about 1 mil a day with sporadic
playing, and I'm a wimpy mage too :-)
> Also, it's difficult to make item-rent limits stick. Most people will
> just make a "storage character" to hang on to their extra kits if they
> aren't allowed to rent that many. Since this is damned hard to detect,
> there's not much that can be done about it. ;)
A player once asked me what the point was of keeping 5 sets of duplicate
equipment around in storage (On Jedi its real easy with Cryo). The answer is
quite simple. Why does the bank exist? So that if you happen to die and can
not recover your corpse, you will always have some money to fall back on. In
the same way, why just fall back on money? Would it not be even more desirable
to have a "bank" of equipment to cover those unfortunate deaths or DT's?
I sure as hell will cover myself so that no matter what may happen to my
character, there is no chance I will need to start from scratch with nothing.
As a result, I have something like 20 million coins in the bank on several
characters so nothing done to any individual character would hurt me. I also
keep duplicate equipment is cryogenic rent so in the case of an emergency, I
will always have eq to fall back on. A solution to this might be to limit
or eliminate the bank, perhaps establishing a "maximum insured deposit".
The obvious solution to infaltion is to raise rent. For all practical
purposes, this is the only expense a player has. Those little tidbits sold
in Midgaard are trivial cost. If the players complain, so what? As an
implementor, you are not obligated to bow down to the demands of the players.
For the sake of game balance, raising the rent usually is a necessary evil.
--
Naved A. Surve
--------------------------
sur...@server.cs.jhu.edu
sur...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
Magus Magnus
Ok this is just an idea that we (the Imp's at HAPPYMud) have been kicking
around to make gold valuable on our mud. Actually its a few ideas :)
First off, the item limit in rent has to stay. It keeps the game balance a
little easier to maintain. But as far as rent goes, a few free gold worth of
rent per level (right now ours is WAY too high at around 1000 per level).
This lets newbies rent some of their not so hot stuff, even if they spent all
their money to get it. Also the amount that rent is changes with each Inn
in each town. Assing realistic values to objects also kinda helps but who
wants to do all that extra work ;)
Second, the biggest way we were thinking about keeping gold valuable is sort of
based on the AD&D version of treasure. The gold value that a mobs has is the
total value of the treasure it holds. It will have UP to that amount in gems,
weapons, armor, or other objects and gold. That is all randomly rolled up.
In addition to that, the mobs (human and demi-human at least) will actually now
get hungry and have to go find food. If they have the gold, they will go buy
food at their local bakery/deli/restaurant. If the mobs are carrying cash, its
probably for a damned good reason.
A few other little things that may help out. Considering whether or not a mob
SHOULD have money?? A fido carrying a ten spot??? A butterfly carrying cash??
Come on people!!! We should have more common sense than that!~! But then what
about the newbies?? Well, maybe they should start out with a little cash. The
newbies on our mud will (not quite written yet :) ) have little newbie stories
that will explain WHY you are standing before the gates of this city with a
mace and a few items and some coins. These arent just people that are suddenly
appearing in the mud. They have been around, just not adventurers.
I am NOT claiming in the least that these are orginial ideas, well maybe the
one about the mobs buying food but...., just taht these are the ways we have
tried to combat the problem of valuless gold. The deathtrap scheme in the
original code and carried through in most of the code I have seen (not that
much :) ) is ok except for the fact that once an area gets explored, people
know where it is and how to avoid it and the most eq turnover then is newbie
stuff or at least lower level stuff. I personally dont like the deathtrap
schema although the idea behind them is commendable, there just needs to be
a better system.
Wulfin@HAPPYMud "New and Improved HAPPYMud is Baked!! Not Fried!!"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
.sig? .sig? We don need no steenkin .sig!
Magus Magnus
>[rest of thread deleted 'cuz it was way to loong ;)]
>
>
>Wulfin@HAPPYMud "New and Improved HAPPYMud is Baked!! Not Fried!!"
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>.sig? .sig? We don need no steenkin .sig!
One more thing I forgot to mention was our new guild system where joining
guilds not only takes xp but also money. There is an intiation fee and also
a membership fee, your debt being compiled by the Guild until it reaches a
point when they send someone from the Collection Agency after you. This was
another way we thought we could a) make money valuable and b) (and more
importantly) change the guild system fair bit. And one more thing, outstanding
debts to the Guild will affect your practicing ability. I.E., if you havent
paid up in full when you go to practice, they wont let you. Kinda like going
to a health spa, you gotta pay up before you can use the equipment.
Wulfin@HAPPYMud "HAPPYMud is made with 100% natural fibers and all bran for
that great get up and go taste."
Bananafish
I looked at the latest posts on MERC.
MERC, much to it's credit or tuna,
has become the center of controversy........
Everything from flames about idea stealing to
(and yes, this was posted by Thorn from HAPPYmud)
an orwellian saga in which merc spreads like my sister
and strangles all other MUDs out of existance.
Hate to break it, but.......
THERE'S NOT A DAMN THING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!
MERC can code and code and code with and however they please. Why should
anyone else care? YES, MERC is in the practice of using any good idea
they can find. YES, MERC muds can be run almost anywhere w/ little effort.
At best, all we can do is continue to code our own creativity and realize
that MUDding will not receive a bad name from a spam of MERC copies. I
hesitate to use the phrase MERC clones. In light of the Fearsome
MERC Leviathan, it doesn't seem anyone expects additions to the
WONDEROUS MERC of all muds.
The existance of MERC should be taken as reality, and digested with some
of that pink stuff. I'm not gonna yack on that. What this post is
here for is to question some of the statements made by the MERC gurus.
Why, in light of licensing agreements, legal systems, and something that
passes for decency, would anyone claim to have REWRITTEN dikuMUDs?
If MERC 2.0 is COMPLETELY your code, try removing the licensing agreement,
sending the new code to the original dikuMUD coders, and having
them send THEIR original(and copywrited) code with yours to a lawyer.
My money's on the original, and I'd help pay the lawyer. MERC, in
your quest for base status, don't forget your origins. As with
any diku derivatives, the code you have (and yes this is true) was
FREELY GIVEN TO YOU FOR YOUR MUDDING AND CODING PLEASURE. The original
coders didn't ask for anything, try giving them the respect they
deserve, huh?
*The Letter G can go to HELL!*
It's cool that Y'all have come up with a way to get rid of CMD codes.
This has been flamed as stupid, and I really don't see what it matters,
but IT'S ALL YOURS! For better or for worse, MERC-MERC-MERC-MERC
coders HAVE done SOME of their own code (but not, as it has been
claimed, all of it). Bragging rights on things like this are kinda
childish... I mean saying "Hay, we did this, whatcha think?"
or "We did this to our code, and IT WORKS" (a new thing for my code on muds)
is groovy and such, but why proclaim a mud as better when this happens?
Fact of the matter is, the only thing that counts are results. you can
have a player struct that fits into tiny crevaces, or you can decide to
impliment the dreaded Hauffhaurr structure with pointers to Albequerque.
If the end result is the same: no one really cares. Nine out of ten
players prefer hairballMUD because the admins have replaced their code
with NEW foldiers crystals... watch....
"wow, I didn't notice any difference"
"There's a different feeling to the DO_CAST command, is this my father's
dikumud?"
NO! but who gives a SHIT?
as far as bragging about SPELLO missing, why? When I revamped our spell
parser to enhance or new fight code (see Thorn's previous post),
I took it out too. SPELLO worked fine in gamma 0.0, but once you
start changing the spell struct, there's no point to using such an obese
define. If this is the extent of MERCs internal ingenuity, MERC still
holds it's old place in my list of MUDS - a gamma 0.0 or such derivative.
Nothing more. I feign compare it to silly, out of respect for the silly
coders(and my not-so-asbestos undershorts), but MERC isn't the HOLY GRAIL!
It's mearly a GRAIL shaped beacon, lit by its coders, to spawn like
weasels in heat. Don't get me wrong, if you want to write a MUD for the
purpose of mass production, DO IT! (you have) I think it's great that
there's something that is site-versatile, but it's not the end all be all
like it's made out to be.
and you may ask yourself - Who's idea was it anyway?
and you may ask yourself - Where is my original code?
and you may ask yourself - How do I become base?
and you may ask yourself - Who has more players?
and you may ask yourself - Why are my cloths so big?
and you may ask yourself
but you probably won't answer.
Just thoughts, no more mine than anyones.
SUEDE@HAPPYmud ltd. co. inc. dds. phd. mba. hifi. bbs.
ascii. now. bse. aka. bin. gif. .c
.h .o .ohshitwheredidthatfilego?
esquire
"When used regularly, HAPPYmud helps to prevent plaque and gum disease"
Michael C. Mraz
This is a solution if and only if you have a multiclass system. Read no
further if you do not.
At least on Copper when you want to multi from being a single class you must
pay 100k coins per level to go multiclass. Since becoming a multiclass is
quite an advantage (at least on Copper once you have maxed as a single) the
cost is worth your while. depending on the inflation of your mud you could
set the price per level accordingly.
Also I suggest this... at zone reset time why should mobs be loaded w/ cash
when their EQ is not. Take the idea of in game item limits and convert it
to coinage. set a MAX_COINS_IN_GAME and when A zone resets if the coinage
in game is higher than the max the mob is reset w/ out any gold. This may
not apply to shopkeepers because they have to buy but it could be set off
by an if flag similar to the if flag for loAding a piece of EQ. Sounds
reasonable top me...
I put these up as ideas... I have not coded them nor do I intend to. No
need to flame me for merely being creative, and yes this is a paranoid
sentence. Happy computer generated nuber slaying... (After all isn't a
mobile just a bunch of interacting numbers? *gig* I am too damn logical!
--
* "Teachers should teach you *HOW* to learn, not *WHAT* *******************
* to learn." -Richard Bainter 1992 * E-mail? What's *
* "If we eat it down 2 more feet it'll fit in the fridge."* that? & how do *
* -Barney to Homer about a 16' sub sandwich * I get some? *
Steve Lumetta
Someone called Prydain at Adversary was working on a realistic economic
system for muds back about a year ago. I can probably find his address
if anyone is interested.
--Steve
Steve Lumetta
all. I mean, really, how heavy can a coin be if anyone can carry
millions of them? And given the density of most precious metals, how
big are they? Hopefully people can see where this is leading.
Has anyone ever implemented a system for making coins into real objects
on a mud? I have one at the moment, and I think it'll handle most of
the nonsensical inflation (although people loaded will gold instead of
brass coins will still be rich). To make sure they don't keep too much,
though, I'm planning on each individual's cult demanding a share of
the take (based on rank in the cult, and not quite ironed out as to
exactly what the 'take' is).
Feel free to implement this idea. I make no claim to it (in fact, someone
else brought up the idea anyway, but it was ages ago--Scarrow? Muddy?).
--Steve
Gnort, God of Chaos
>Inflation is kind of a funny problem--people with millions of coins and
>all. I mean, really, how heavy can a coin be if anyone can carry
>millions of them? And given the density of most precious metals, how
>big are they? Hopefully people can see where this is leading.
The argumentation of the dikuteam is, of course, that the gold coins are very,
very small ;-)
>Has anyone ever implemented a system for making coins into real objects
>on a mud?
I have. It's currently awaiting some testing, but it appears to work.
The bitch part was to get the shopkeepers to take the amount in the right
coins ;) (Simplified example: If you have 45 iron coins, and one gold coin,
and want to buy something worth 3 copper coins, it should take the 36 iron
coins, leaving you with 9 iron coins and one gold.
(Current exchange rate = 12 coins per value-level. iron, copper, silver, gold.
That makes 1 gold coin == 12*12*12 = 1728 iron coins))
Point is, exchanging money shouldn't be for free, banks will charge for storing
valuables etc.
Sidebenefits are of course that you can treat money the way you'd treat any
other object, e.g. put it in a bag, dig it down in the room, etc.
And of course. You can carry more money the stronger you are. Newbies are
seldomly very strong, ergo newbies can't carry very large amounts of cash.
I also kinda like the concept of a guy standing down in a cave somewhere,
stripping off armor to get those last gold coins.
>Feel free to implement this idea. I make no claim to it (in fact, someone
>else brought up the idea anyway, but it was ages ago--Scarrow? Muddy?).
Shan't say. Could've been me, though the concept is of course hardly new.
Various Lp's have been doing it this way for ages.
>--Steve
--
Gnort @ { DikuII | Unicorn | Discworld } gn...@daimi.aau.dk
Steve Lumetta
>The bitch part was to get the shopkeepers to take the amount in the right
>coins ;) (Simplified example: If you have 45 iron coins, and one gold coin,
>and want to buy something worth 3 copper coins, it should take the 36 iron
>coins, leaving you with 9 iron coins and one gold.
and the shopkeeper then replies, "That'll be 100 brass, please." You
then have about a minute or so to get the equivalent of 100 brass coins
handed to the shopkeeper. After that he gives you back what you'gve
given him and tells you to stop wasting his time.
>>Feel free to implement this idea. I make no claim to it (in fact, someone
>>else brought up the idea anyway, but it was ages ago--Scarrow? Muddy?).
>
>Shan't say. Could've been me, though the concept is of course hardly new.
>Various Lp's have been doing it this way for ages.
No offense, but to my knowledge I haven't spoken with you before :)
--Steve
A Geyser - 9247823 - Elektronies
(Tony Sarno) describes inflation resulting in a MUD as new monsters
bring new money (treasure) into the game. Wouldn`t it make sense to
have goods to a similar value come available in shops, auctioneers etc.
everytime a treasure-carrying monster is created. This would mean that
shops don`t have unlimited supplies of daggers, for example, but only
as many as they have a: Received from the Gods as a result of monster
creation
or
b: Brought from players.
A similar logic should be followed when new treasure containing areas
are opened, and anywhere else new money comes into the game. The
principle should be that whenever new money is created, new goods should
be created too so that the MoneyValue:GoodsValue ratio remains as close
as possible to 1:1. This will not cut out all inflation (the value of
good to compensate for new money may be over/underestimated by the
Gods/OperatingSystem), but it will retain a reasonable balance.
Just my three cents worth.
Albert Geyser
University of Pretoria
gey...@babel.ee.up.ac.za
Gnort, God of Chaos
>In article <1993Apr7.1...@daimi.aau.dk> gn...@daimi.aau.dk (Gnort, God of Chaos) writes:
>>The bitch part was to get the shopkeepers to take the amount in the right
>>coins ;) (Simplified example: If you have 45 iron coins, and one gold coin,
>>and want to buy something worth 3 copper coins, it should take the 36 iron
>>coins, leaving you with 9 iron coins and one gold.
>Hmm, I was thinking about doing a timed exchange...you say 'buy hauberk'
>and the shopkeeper then replies, "That'll be 100 brass, please." You
>then have about a minute or so to get the equivalent of 100 brass coins
>handed to the shopkeeper. After that he gives you back what you'gve
>given him and tells you to stop wasting his time.
I thought about this as well, but considering how little typing modern mudders
get along with, I think this system would soon become annoying. After all,
if you type "buy long sword", and you're able to afford it, I'm pretty sure
that's what you intended to do. Having the computer take as many coins as
possible makes sense, as coins have the annoying property of mass ;-)
>>Shan't say. Could've been me, though the concept is of course hardly new.
>No offense, but to my knowledge I haven't spoken with you before :)
Thought you meant on this newsgroup, of course ;)
>--Steve
/Lars
Chris Herringshaw
definately interesting) thief mobile. It was called a soldier, and he
stole items from chars but first, he yelled out something like:
The Soldier yells 'I want the golden ring'...then people scrambled to
sell their gold rings to newbies or run and rent so they didn't risk losing
thier precious items. Kinda interesting concept...definately a shocker
to the poor newbies who bought cool equipment....
Daemon
Catherine Stanton
I was going to mention the thieves that some Dikus have sneaking
and hiding on muds, but then I remembered that at fifth level I and
another player got together and dusted em all off and made well over
a half mill right off the bat. The thieves were worth lousy experience
but you couldn't beat the money that you could get off of them.
Catherine
Kelsey@ROM
Kelsey@Eternal Realms
Eric L. Pilcher
up on me twice, the second one after a very long post. So ya'll won't
have the pleasure of reading it (is that a good or bad thing?) Anyway, to
sum up what I was tried to post:
Shopkeepers: suppose they only bought items that had MAGIC flags? it
would cut down on all the longswords being sold in town. To make up for
this you create newbie stores, where you can only sell things if you are
a certain level or lower.
Wonder Potions: you make them real damn expensive, put them in a shop that
is far out of the way, and make the shopkeeper really gross! Players will
still use them, but sparingly, and they won't try to kill Mr.Shopkeeper
if he does 50d50 per hit.
Hospitals: You allow players to spend money to get such things as cure
blind, cure poison, and cure critical. Cost for this is based on level
and steep enough that clerics will still be useful.
Death Traps: On Kallisti these remove cash instead of equipment.
(which does nothing for equipment inflation) but gets rid of some cash.
Special Skills: Luft, who unfortunatly left Kallisti, did a great job
with the 'hunt' skill, anyone can learn it but you need 50 prac sessions
per practice, and 4 practices (200 prac sessions) to learn to use it.
Prac sessions are available from the meta-sage for 300k a piece. So
if a player had 0 prac sessions, 60 mil coins later, they could be able
to hunt.
Mobs that ditch objects: I've got an Undertaker that at about every 5
seconds, picks up everything in the room, and then sacrifices it all to
the gods. Shouldn't janitor do something similar, perhaps taking items to
the dump and dropping them all.
Strongholds: I like the idea of players being able to buy residences to
the similar tune of Redferne's Flying Citadel and Quiffy's Custom Rooms.
These should be at very exorbant prices though, and should include rent
rooms that the players can actually use. Another idea along these lines
would be allowing a player to 'personalize' an item at a very high cost.
Anyway, that's about all I can think of right now.
Jonathan Briggs
(This is my first post ever, so here goes! :)
I think I have a good idea about how to limit money on a MUD.
Make money weigh something! Can you imagine anyone staggering around
under a pile of 10,000 gold coins? Also implement limits on bank
accounts, like 15,000 insured, and above that there's a chance it might
be stolen, or lost.
Just my 2 coins of thought :)
Valyn @ MUME
Dan Brumleve
>Somebody in some post mentioned something about MUDs having an inflation
> problem. The response I have for this is: YES!!!
Look, it's... it's... an _intelligent_ post from Ajax! ;-)
>The reason is intuitively obvious even to the most casual observer --- when
> a mobile recreates itself whole from nothingness, it also creates more
> coinage. So the amount of money in the game goes up and up and up.
'xactly... There's more coming in than coming out. One "solution"
to this is just to increase rent costs, but there are usually ways around
that (if rent is dependant on level, use "storage" characters... if there's
crash-saving code, take advangage of it). However, even if you have an
infallible rent system, it's still a grossly unrealistic system to apply
to a MUD. In most DikuMUDs, money is _only_ used for rent, an utterly
silly concept, and if something else can be found to fill its economical
niche ( ;) ), it could be removed. Just about anything could serve
its purpose... Taxes, weapon/armor repair costs, travel expenses,
etc. I believe SillyMUD and a few others have done something along
those lines. That still won't solve the imbalance problem though... I
have an idea for it which I'll explain below.
>A REAL cool solution would be to have the prices in the shops go up as the
> game realizes there is more coinage floating around. One drawback in
> this scenario (and it's a big one) would be that the newbies (who don't
> have all the extra money) log in to find recalls costing 10K apiece.
> The cash isn't evenly distributed, which makes this inherently unfair,
> (even tho it IS just like real life. :)
If the same thing was done with rent, there would be no imbalance,
although after a couple years of running, 'G' (giga-) would probably
replace 'K' (kilo-).
>A pretty brilliant "temporary" solution was come up with by one of the Imps
> of JediMUD: he sold off a pretty powerful, incredibly rare item to the
> highest bidder. Presto change-o, seven million coins out of the game.
> An intrepid Immortal duplicated this feat using all of his "old" eq
> (Jedi has just gone through an equipment downgrade, and the dust hasn't
> settled yet), and disposed of another 11 million.
And then the pretty powerful, incredibly rare item is used to help
the buyer get money all the more quickly. Even if the money was simply
stolen, it probably wouldn't do any good upon one individual.
>Anybody got any other ideas on how to deal with MUDflation? :)
How about this... The game keeps track of the total "player profit"
(the amount of money brought out of the game minus the amount of money
put into the game) every hour, divides it by the number of players, and
subtracts it from the gold carried by every player (possibly with some
kind of curvature depending on level). That would make sure that the
same amount of money stays in the game (that is, carried by players)
at all times. However, it should only be subtracted if the total
amount of money owned by players is greater than a certain constant
(say, 50000 gold coins) times the number of players.
> --- Ajax, AKA Dyrewulf, God of Chaos and Anarchy.
--
_______________________________________________________________
Dan Brumleve, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
(brum...@atropa.stat.uiuc.edu, brum...@imsasun.imsa.edu)
"A computer chattered away to itself for no apparent reason.
This was because reason had in fact gone out to lunch."
-Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Mitchell Tse
>(This is my first post ever, so here goes! :)
You did a good Job, Mr. Briggs. 8)
>I think I have a good idea about how to limit money on a MUD.
>Make money weigh something! Can you imagine anyone staggering around
>under a pile of 10,000 gold coins?
Yeah, people have though of this, and it's a nice idea, although not many
implement this. Not even Merc. 8(
Actually, I don't mind a compromise, of having only one type of coin, like
for example, just gold coins, and assign a simple weight to that. Now,
although it's not realistic for a world to use ONLY gold as a form of
currency, I wouldn't mind sacrificing that part of realism for functionality.
> ... Also implement limits on bank
>accounts, like 15,000 insured, and above that there's a chance it might
>be stolen, or lost.
What I was thinking, instead of a set limit of money held, I was thinking of
a sliding scale of interest charged AGAINST the player for holding the money,
so that if you put in only like 100 coins, you might be charged like 1 coin
a week, while putting in 10^6 coins might carry an interest of like 10^5
coins a week. (i.e. interest from 1% up to like 8%) I was thinking about
this for Merc, but I got voted down. OH, well. 8)
>Valyn @ MUME
Hatchet
Merc Industries
Kang Sun
Well, there's no perfect solution. A simple yet fairly effective solution
would be a combination of rent and regressive tax. If the player money
stays within a certain range of limit, don't tax. If the person's money
goes above certain level, levy a tax on the person. Start with whatever
percentage you like and goes to 99% eventually. Rent will have to be
changed slightly though. There will be short term and long term. Short
term will be by daily basis, long term will be up to the player. The player
can elect to rent for a month, etc. if s/he has enough money. When the
player goes into long term rent, the money is subtracted. So if a player
wants to go on a vacation, s/he can scramble for money to rent enough days
without worrying being taxed on all of those money.
However, there are many problems with this scheme as well. For example, a
player logs in say 11pm on April 7th. He earns some money and it exceeded
the limit, say the tax is collected on 12am April 8th, he'll be "unfairly"
taxes for the money he plans to do long term rent. Or you can get away with
it by dropping all of those coins on the ground, etc. No perfect solution
I'm afraid. However, it's simpler to implement and fairly effective compare
with some other solutions.
Have the mud divide into guilds or realms with the appropriate taxes,
levies, tithe, etc. Well, that makes money more valuable but still....Money
is a fairly useless commodity in diku mud. equipments are the ultimate
commodity. Also immortals running the realms, etc. can cause potential
problems. Inexperience or immoral immortals can cause inbalance in the game.
Using money to get heal, food, drink, etc. is a solution but heal you will
be stepping into the realm of clerics, food, drink, etc. cost very little
anyways. Cause equipments to wear and tear so you have to repair is another
solution but people will hoard equipment against that money or even both.
It's hard.
Don't get me wrong but trying the real economy in mud is kinda difficult.
GNP, velocity of money...hmm....well, good luck. GNP growth can be
caliberated with player growth? Ok, I will create a new character if I am
earning more money so my money won't disappear, etc. Use registration to
prevent that, that can cause inconvenience, etc. As far as velocity of
money, YOU SURE?????
The factors influencing velocity of money in real life according to the
monetarists.
method of exchange. For example electronic transfer technology will speed
up the velocity, etc. That's the efficiency and a big factor. Also growth
in money supply, etc. How are you going to monitor the efficiency of money
being used? Everytime players buy and sell to the shop you will monitor? A
lot of the cash were exchanged between players. Experienced players give to
newbies. Auctioning off equipment, etc. If you count all of these in, some
of these can be easily inflated. I.e. I can get someone setup some macro
and we'll give money to each other, increase the velocity so both of us can
make more money, etc.
I wish you the best of luck in implementing it. I'm sorry. I'm an econ
major. I got sick of economics in my sophomore year. Econ is a voodoo
science in my opinion. Many people lose the perspective on the whole
picture when they started to concentrate on the smaller things such as
analyzing the stocks past history, etc. Oh well. An example, my teammates
are equal or better than me in technical analysis of stocks. However, I was
able to predict the stock market crash (plus minus one quarter in our
simulation) while most of the people in the class aren't even aware a crash
is coming. Due to my recent difficulties in life, I tried to transfer my
method to one of my teammate but it's difficult. She looks at the
unemployment figure too much. Unemployment figure is AFTER the fact. If
you want to see where the economy is going, look at the exchange rate,
interest rate, etc. Oh well...you can't just rely on figures. You should
also look at the past history, etc. It's kinda complicated but like real
life, econ shouldn't be so simple.....It's sad. People learning in class
start to lose a grip on the big pictures. They rely on all of these
statistics tools they use, etc. Oh well.
Chris Herringshaw
the char currently carries as an item(s) based on how much he is carrying?
That would solve the problem of carrying all the gold on the planet in one bag.
Add a decision to decide which message to send to the char (too heavy..or
can't carry that many...) and I think that provides a simple, naive, generic,
plain, vanilla fix. (okay Chris lets just flame yourself...)
Hmm...in response to Steve's follow up concerning the text editor saving after
every keystroke...I guess our original intent was to eliminate the
"duplicating" of items and gold ala Epic and Copper. One of the ideas was
to save after every equipment transaction (drop get junk...), but caused too
much lag on regular gamma-type diku. I guess my point (I really didn't come
out and say it though...) was that the server was written from scratch and
was able to save after every status change without lag (although not a
practical idea..) meaning that you could implement a lot more features into
the game without causing mucho lag, and this is the kind of improvement we
all would like to see, as opposed to "I saw mobs talking on
run-of-the-mill-mud and I wrote a similar routine from scratch for my
mobiles." I don't know if this explains my point more or not, but I tried! =)
Daemon
.
Alan Krantz
>
>Hmm...in response to Steve's follow up concerning the text editor saving after
>every keystroke...I guess our original intent was to eliminate the
>"duplicating" of items and gold ala Epic and Copper. One of the ideas was
>to save after every equipment transaction (drop get junk...), but caused too
>much lag on regular gamma-type diku.
The cloning are do to other problems. There is little or no need to save
on every transfer. Don't work around the bugs - fix them.
atk
John Brothers
It is trivial to keep track of the flow of money from pc's to npc's and
vice-versa. There are a signifigantly limited number of ways to
transfer money - give, get, buy, sell, rent and steal are the common cases, the
uncommon cases would be the special procedure mobs that handle money.
(junk, dump, guildmasters, repair guys, etc).
We can also keep track of the amount of money created, both as objects,
and as coin amounts on mobs.
Now we can keep track how how much money goes 'out' of the system (to players)
vs. how much money goes 'into' the system (to 'the game').
The trick here, of course, figuring out the right formula.
Submitted for your consideration:
over the period of one 'boot', keep track of how much money was created,
and how much money was dropped out of the system over that which was
put in:
i.e. if 1 million coins total were created, and the players collected
500,000, and the 'game' collected 100,000
then the total 'profit' for the players over the time period was
400k
so, reducing the gold on every mob by 40% would (in theory) make the total
inflow and outflow equal.
There are obviously questions involved in this. Would it work? It seems
to me that it would hurt incoming new characters more than older characters,
since the older characters would already have wealth.
how long should the average be summed? should it be continuously updated
over the entire life of the mud? Or should it be 'forgotten' from
boot to boot. (obviously, the game would store the 'last' boots
information to control costs on the current boot, but what about the one
before that?)
Could it be averaged on the fly? I.e. the game keeps a running total
throughout its runtime, and adjusts the gold of newly created creatures
based on the old figures? This has the drawback of potentially being highly
variable in the early portions of the game, especially if players deliberately
bought lots of stuff in order to change the ratio. This is only a problem
if the game areas are not booted as a whole, but booted in small peices.
Could it be a multi-pronged format, with multipliers to
shop buy and sell costs, rent and new mob gold content? This would perhaps
be the most 'random' way, causing interesting fluctuations in prices,
and rental costs over time.
And after contemplation, there is no need to store both the gold going to
pcs, and the gold going to the game as seperate numbers.
So how about this:
4 variables:
lastTotalGold, lastToPCprofit
currTotalGold, currToPCprofit
Considering the money and uptime of most muds, these should be
floating point variables.
At boot, game reads lastTotalgold and lasttoPcprofit from a file where
they were saved.
Game uses this as the base.
Game adjusts rent prices.. this is outgoing money. CurrToPcProfit
goes negative.
Game creates mobs for zones.
perc = (LastToPcGold+CurrToPcGold)/(LastTotalGold+CurrTotalGold)
each mob's money is modified by that percentage. similarly, buy and
sell costs are also modified, by it, or its inverse, and rent cost.
each new mobs money is added to the CurrTotal. After a certain point,
the game saves CurrTotal and CurrToPcGold in a file somewhere, for the
next boot to read. Can't be too early, otherwise the sample size will
be too small.
And so, when a character logs in, they will find that the money is
not only different than it was yesterday, it may be different than
it was an hour ago. There will still be mobs that are 'richer' in
general (but keeping track of this 'per zone' would be most
excellent), but the amounts couldn't be counted on.
I think I'm going to implement this for myself. It doesn't seem like
it would take either a lot of cpu time, or a lot of man time, and could
add a new level of dynamics to the game. The rental loss wouldn't be
attributable to a zone, so it would have to be based on the global
economy. (unless we kept track of where they rented)
Comment.
tda...@engin.umich.edu
duping items left and right. (At least at one time it was like that).
Until the bugs are found and fixed, I'd really rather avoid the hassle of
players complaining because "so and so" is duping this and that and
having players with 14 silver rings. (I have seen this). THIS is why
we came up with the idea to save after equipment transactions -- to
temporarily solve the problem until the bigger bugs can be fixed. But thanks
for the tip about fixing the crash bugs...I'm not sure we would have thought of
that.
Daemon
Brian Scearce
item limits. There are two numbers associated with each item, "base"
and "percent". The maximum number of items of that type that can exist
in the game (rented *and* in-game) are: base + (percent*#players)/100.
Unique items are (base, percent) of (1,0) (one item)
Rare items are (0,1) (one per hundred players)
Common items are (say) (1000,200) (two per player plus 1000 extra)
Items that have hit their limit aren't loaded any more. This is not
very popular with players, and I don't strongly recommend it. I was
hoping that it might spur a intra-player market, but it hasn't had that
effect; it's just exacerbated the hoarding problem.
Brian aka Benedict of Mudde Pathetique
---
Brian Scearce b...@sector7g.eng.sun.com
The above does not necessarily represent Sun policy.
"You can't fit the truth on a t-shirt, man."
"That'd fit."
Michael C. Mraz
>Unique items are (base, percent) of (1,0) (one item)
>Rare items are (0,1) (one per hundred players)
Smart players would just bloat your database w/ extra characters to get more
EQ loaded. The would gladly spend a half hour or so creating and saving 100
storage characters in order to get 1 more of that item loaded.
>Common items are (say) (1000,200) (two per player plus 1000 extra)
>
>Items that have hit their limit aren't loaded any more. This is not
>very popular with players, and I don't strongly recommend it. I was
>hoping that it might spur a intra-player market, but it hasn't had that
>effect; it's just exacerbated the hoarding problem.
>
>Brian aka Benedict of Mudde Pathetique
Scarrow
>In article <ls66dm...@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM> bene...@sector7g.Eng.Sun.COM writes:>
>>Unique items are (base, percent) of (1,0) (one item)
>>Rare items are (0,1) (one per hundred players)
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Smart players would just bloat your database w/ extra characters to get more
>EQ loaded. The would gladly spend a half hour or so creating and saving 100
>storage characters in order to get 1 more of that item loaded.
Well, typically I expect such an action would be noticed. However, there
does remain the problem of seperating the active players from the whole
number of players. Item limiting by itself has never, in my experience,
provided a method of effectively limiting inflation. Instead, you result in
players hoarding items (as mentioned in the intial post). On muds without
player killing it can be even worse, as there's no way to get at an item
other than just sitting around and hoping that person dies. If they do and
leave a corpse, you have to worry about being called a corpse thief, etc.
Prydain, as at least one other person mentioned, had some interesting
ideas about limiting coinage and making mobiles pay to be loaded with items,
etc. I think the other thing to do is create more of a buyer/seller market.
A lot of items in Diku are useful primarily to be sold. For example, you
with your greatsword kill three or four mobiles armed with short swords.
One of them also carries a diamond which is ITEM_TREASURE. Now, unless you
can sell the diamond to the grocer, it has no value to you. You can't wear
it, set it in something, barter at other stores with it, etc. If short
swords are also common, it has little use to you other than to give as a
gift to another player without such an item, or to sell it to a shopkeeper.
Well, you can make gems settable, make fashion an available option for
a mud. You can also think about concepts like supply/demand (and on a far
greater scale than simply coin/object supply and demand). For example, you
could set something up where when twenty people roam around slaying all the
miners in the local mine, the cost of forging weapons increases resulting in
an increase in the cost of weapons at the weaponshop. This, in turn,
results in fewer mobiles having weapons to defend themselves with and fewer
players having weapons to kill them with. Note: there's no inherent balance
here ... you could potentially drive the economic system into disaster (then
again, this has been known to happen in real life as well). I think a
system incorporating coin encumbrance, severly limiting the number of coins
available, etc., is probably an effective enough method without going to
something extremely over complicated. The balance is, unfortunately,
typically bent towards the players' benefit, since usually the players will
win the battles (thus the mobiles->currency->players tends to flow more
quickly than the players->currency->mobiles). There are a few options to
this, including: making mobiles smart enough to loot corpses and then do
away with the currency (unfortunately, it's a bit unrealistic ... what do
they do with the coins?), making mobiles take some of the initiative to the
players (similar to the above ...), making mobiles as near player smartness
as you can (thus they win more often ... whether this is good or bad depends
on your perspective a lot), making coins and objects more destructable (so
that players must purchase more), providing ways to spend the coins that
have no direct material response (ummm ... sort of like playing a video
game, paying a hooker for sex, renting a room, etc. ... things which result
in no new objects being made, and yet consume funds).
Scarrow, who really had no intention of following this thread, but
somehow got sucked in anyway
--
Shawn L. Baird (Scarrow) | "By all means, take the moral high ground --
bai...@ursula.ee.pdx.edu | all that heavenly backlighting makes you a
-------------------------| much easier target." --Solomon Short
Jamieson Norrish
now that it's happened, a couple of things.
Firstly, why is everyone calling the problem inflation? The problem is
that money is coming into the system from nowhere, rather than prices
increasing and the value of currency decreasing.
On a more useful note, I think that, as some people have put forward,
the simplest solution is to make the system slightly more realistic.
That is, give coins a weight, and limit the number of coins available
- even just the first could alleviate the problem to a great extent,
assuming that the currency is in the form of a heavy metal. There's
just so much weight one can carry, and bags/pockets can only hold so
much. It's quite ridiculous to have one person carrying around
hundreds of coins, let alone thousands, tens of thousands, etc.
Jamie
Devin Joseph Rubia
>gt7...@prism.gatech.EDU (Eric L. Pilcher) writes:
>>Rent does cause a few problems though. Namely, if a player is gone a long
>>time and runs out of cash to pay, then they lose all their stuff.
>>A good compromise to this might be allowing a player to rent his/her 5 most
>>valueable objects for free and then charging rent thereafter. This will
>>ensure that a player always have some equipment no matter what.
>
> This rankles at me for some reason. Granted, you shouldn't force people
> to play your MUD every day, but giving them their "favorite five" for
> free will REALLY cut down on rent costs. But, since I can't think of
> a better solution, at least not now, I guess I'll just shut up. :)
>
> Anybody running a Diku with no inflation problem care to share the
> secret with the rest of us? :)
>
> --- Ajax, AKA Dyrewulf, God of Chaos and Anarchy.
>
Seems to me like a good compromise would be to have rent stop after a
certain number of days, say 5 days. This way a weekend player would not
lose everything if they miss a weekend or two but they still have to pay
rent. Another way I can see to do this would be to have rent deminish
as the days pass, ie. the rent per day gets less as time passes. Either
way regular players will pay full rent but occasional players don't get
toasted.
* My .sig is in bed sick with a virus. :( de...@garfield.cs.mun.ca *
Scarrow
>Like Scarrow, I didn't want to get sucked into this thread either, but
>now that it's happened, a couple of things.
>Firstly, why is everyone calling the problem inflation? The problem is
>that money is coming into the system from nowhere, rather than prices
>increasing and the value of currency decreasing.
Inflation is just kind of a general term for economic woes, I guess. I also
use the term inflation a lot when talking about inflation of numbers (more
levels, more gold, more hit points, more spells, more skills, more this,
more that, etc.)
>On a more useful note, I think that, as some people have put forward,
>the simplest solution is to make the system slightly more realistic.
>That is, give coins a weight, and limit the number of coins available
>- even just the first could alleviate the problem to a great extent,
>assuming that the currency is in the form of a heavy metal. There's
>just so much weight one can carry, and bags/pockets can only hold so
>much. It's quite ridiculous to have one person carrying around
>hundreds of coins, let alone thousands, tens of thousands, etc.
Yet isn't it amazing that one of the first thing newbie players start
bugging a newly opened mud about is when the bank/ATMs are going to be in?
Now, I don't find the concept of protecting valuables unreasonable, but the
bank/ATM concept is just too ludicrous. In any case, the fact that treasure
should be able to be stashed should perhaps influence the decision to also
add coin limiting methods (and, after all, only so many coins will be made).
On a somewhat different note (relating a bit to keeping stashes), a lot
of Dikus save the player after every item transaction ... now, in a binary
format the overhead for this can be reasonable (depending on a lot of
factors) ... anyone have any ideas for keeping an up-to-date context of the
entire world? For a Diku this would involve only keeping track of mobiles/
objects, as the rooms don't tend to move around or be added/deleted in the
middle of the game. I think it might be interesting to experiment with a
somewhat more static game.
Oh, and finally, I don't know if anyone else has experimented with
this, but it seemed feasible, so I gave it a try. What I did was change
the reboot code so that the mud exec's itself (and modified the socket code
so that sockets don't close on an exec), and which then saves all of the
current descriptors to a reboot file. If the reboot file is present, the
newly exec'ed server uses the information to build the new descriptor list
and then places the characters at the entry menu to the game (thus I can
reboot into a newly compiled version, or with a new database without actually
kicking anyone off). Don't know if this is a new concept or not, it just
occurred to me some time ago that it might be feasible and this was the first
time I got around to trying it out and it did turn out to be feasible.
Library Circulation Staff
are some ideas that may help with curing the inflation problem, I hope.
Have an auction house. This fills a multitude of nitches too. For the
oldtimers, here is how it worked on Sejnet. You payed a fee to be a part
of 'adventurer's guild'. The charge was nGold per level, each raise in
level necessitated paying fee again. (first chance to soak up money)
Members would give item to auctioneer with minimum amount they would accept
for payment. Auctioneer would announce item to all members and let bidding
start. If no one bid, the item would stay in his hands and be listed on
his list. If original holder wanted item back s/he would have to buy it!
After item is purchased the acutioneer would keep a small percentage
(5-10%). Money is now available to original holder. If member does not stop
by to pick up item they could be fined amount of item before allowed to use
service again. Or maybe just kicked out (repay level fee) and assesed a
partial fine, cuz they wont get the item. (See next paragraph)
So what does this do with inflation? Well, the list is reset with MUD daily
and if you are not there to get your money,... So sorry. (this is 3rd chance
to get money, items lost would be fourth). Okay, so maybe this is only
a small way to impact inflation, but it helps in many others.
It can handle what the market will pay v what storekeepers will pay/charge.
(This can be used to your advantage if played correctly.) It can tell
you what items are in overabundance/highly desired. (Market feedback is
truthful feedback according to an old econ prof of mine.) etc.
Other idea - Banking. What you have on MUDs is not really banking. These
banks have no way to earn money, but they do provide a service. How is this
possible? What they really do is provide security for players money.
Since they are a service business they should charge for this. Most banks
in the MUDS I have sampled are not much more than respectable thugs that
are recognized by a city. Why not actually have thugs running a bank?
Imagination here regarding the types of characters that would actually
run a midevil (or whatever) money protection service could add some
excitement to the town. (And would this goon have to be paying off the mayor
too? No wonder he has to charge you to protect your money.)
If you are going to charge there can be variable rates depending on how
intimidating the PC is and how much they want to have saved/protected.
If you are going to use regular banks, have them fail. They have for
millenium, why not in Midgaurd? It is a real shame that the bank loaned
money to Orcville and the town got raised by bandits. But now Orcvilles
economy has been savaged and they are defaulting on there loan. The city
then decides to back up the bank with the maximum level insured (or
whatever). The only thing you need to do is post the account insurance
info far enuf ahead of the impending banking crash.
The beauty of this is that different towns can have banks with different
levels of security! I would even tell the PCs about when the loan goes thru
with the hint that they may be able to get a dividend from successful
repayment by Orcville. (But I like mind games ;) )
Well, that's all for now. If anyone ever hears of Sejnet coming back on
line please let me know, I only read about my favorite past pasttime
occasionally.
Jeffrey S Davidson
cir...@ecn.purdue.edu
Twig / Marian
Magus Magnus
>Firstly, why is everyone calling the problem inflation? The problem is
>that money is coming into the system from nowhere, rather than prices
>increasing and the value of currency decreasing.
But that is the point ... This constant influx of money from nowhere is
devaluing the gold presently in the game. If the money has no value behind it
then MUDs will wind up like the Third Riech ... 7 million marks for a loaf of
bread.
Scarrow had an idea that has been kicked around by us in a slightly different
manner. The inclusion of the item type gem and the jeweller. Instead of only
a fashion statement of someone wearing/having/giving away a diamond set in a
ring, we were kicking around the idea of actually having the set gem have some
chance of having slight magical properties. Certain stones may do certain
things or maybe not. Not to say if you set a ruby in a ring you will get the
existing +50 mana ruby ring in the item file, but you will get a generic ruby
ring that may or may not have some sort of minor magical powers because of the
gem. The value of the gem will also play a factor in the likelyhood of it
having any extra properties.
Another idea that we were kicking around was the idea of sacrificing objects to
patron gods. The more valuable the item the better chance that your god will
give you a favor. The favors havent been set up yet tho. And it would also be
level based, the higher level the character, the better the item should be.
This realy wont help all too much with keeping items circulating but it will a
bit.
The idea of item limitation isnt a problem as long as it is handled right.
Renting one of the best items in the game should cost the player a whole hell
of a lot of money IMHO. Then one says "But they will have enough money to rent
it forever". The limitation of money is one way to take care of this. The
other way to take care of it is to take care of storage characters. Deleting
players who havent played for x amount of time would eliminate most storage
chatacters, but smart players would bring on these chars every so often just to
keep them alive. The storage character is the biggest problem to solve when
you are dealing with item limitation and circulation IMHO.
So, I pose that question, how have y'all thought about dealing with storage
characters? ONe method that I kicked around and then tossed out was only
allowing one character per account at any one time in the player file. But
I know that *I* would have at least five or so other than my god character so
I dumped that one quick :) So far, we are kinda stuck on the storage
character problem in the inflation dilemma. But we think that having mobs
randomly load with up to x amount of money, actually have to use money to
buy food and items, having guilds charge entrance fees and regular dues,
keeping rent intact and maybe even a bit harsher, and some sort of a
"Quality Item Control" (thank you AlexMUD :) ) system where there are only
so many of one item ever in the game, and having other uses for money such
as contracts and what have you ... titles, clan privleges, etc.
>
>Jamie
Wulfin@HAPPYMud "HAPPYMud ... Strong enough for a man, pH balanced for a
woman"
_________________
.Sig, .Sig? We don need no stinkin .Sig!
Gonzo the Great
jewelers around to buy and sell gems as a way of transporting larger portions of money more easily?
Brandon
Marc Shepard
to make hording more difficult.
Since I havent tried them (im not even an imp), i expect many flames.
first idea:
currently, when you die all items remain in your corpse. Why not change this so
that the following items disappear when you die:
1) all gold carried.
2) the 2 rarest (or most expensive) items carried.
Everything else remains in the corpse.
This is costlier to high level characters (who tend to have all the rare items/gold
anyhow).
Another idea:
Increase rent for all items which are "excess" (e.g., the first two rings rent for
normal price, 3rd ring is 5*normal, 4th ring is 10*normal, etc).
One problem with this idea is that players can create storage characters to
hold excess items at smaller rents. This problem can be avoided in 1 of 2 ways:
1) Level limits on items (so first level storage characters wont be worth much).
2) Please bear with me on this one ( I know not of what i speak ), but doesnt the telnet
protocol require a the user name on the remote system to be specified? If so, one could
place a limit of, say,
three characters per user (as defined by remote user name + network number).
fluffy/stinky
Steve Lumetta
[text slightly adjusted to keep lines < 80 characters]
>first idea:
>currently, when you die all items remain in your corpse. Why not change this
>so that the following items disappear when you die:
>1) all gold carried.
>2) the 2 rarest (or most expensive) items carried.
>Everything else remains in the corpse.
immediately (and rapidly--not one item every 10 seconds) loot your corpse
and dispose of unusable items (e.g., why should someone keep an unusable wand
of fireball sitting around so that someone else can use it against him?
*SNAP!* -- ok, maybe if the mobs could barter too :) ).
>2) Please bear with me on this one ( I know not of what i speak ), but
>doesnt the telnet protocol require a the user name on the remote system to
>be specified?
Require? No. IP requires a host number for routing, assuming you're
not on the same LAN and lying about your identity.
--Steve
David Shorten
: Like Scarrow, I didn't want to get sucked into this thread either, but
But if you are going to make the game more realistic by making gold
have weight, you should allow for the realistic touch of having
strong enough "pets" (like mules) to carry your extra gold.
And you should also have letters of credit from merchants and banks etc..
(which could be recognized as the method by which people are
"carrying" these huge sums of gold currently).
A possible method that would encourage use of gold, would be to allow
renting of more items than is usual for your mud, but doubling or
tripling (or quadrupling etc..) rent for these extra items.
I think many would take advantage of this convenience, and thus get rid of
much gold.
Dave S.
Sardo Numspha
>The idea of item limitation isnt a problem as long as it is handled right.
>Renting one of the best items in the game should cost the player a whole hell
>of a lot of money IMHO. Then one says "But they will have enough money to rent
>it forever". The limitation of money is one way to take care of this. The
>other way to take care of it is to take care of storage characters. Deleting
>players who havent played for x amount of time would eliminate most storage
>chatacters, but smart players would bring on these chars every so often just to
>keep them alive. The storage character is the biggest problem to solve when
>you are dealing with item limitation and circulation IMHO.
>
>So, I pose that question, how have y'all thought about dealing with storage
>characters? ONe method that I kicked around and then tossed out was only
>allowing one character per account at any one time in the player file. But
>I know that *I* would have at least five or so other than my god character so
>I dumped that one quick :) So far, we are kinda stuck on the storage
>character problem in the inflation dilemma.
A possible solution to the storage character dilemma is to perhaps delete
characters when thier value for
Current Mud time - Creation time (of character)
-----------------------------------------------
Total playing time
exceeds a certain value.
ie. when the storage character exists for a while, and it hasn't been
played alot (the total playing time is low), the value of the above
expression becomes large, and hence can be deleted once above a
certain value.
Andron
--
****************************************************************************
* David J. O'Donnell (AKA Andron etc.) Email: cs44...@lux.latrobe.edu.au *
* BE Computer Systems, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia *
****************************************************************************
Scarrow
>But if you are going to make the game more realistic by making gold
>have weight, you should allow for the realistic touch of having
>strong enough "pets" (like mules) to carry your extra gold.
This is why gold should also, in essence, be minted. That is, limiting the
amount of available gold in the game. If gold is a physical object, this
isn't too hard to do. Of course, there are other methods of doing this
(perhaps your entire mud revolves around the concept that beasts of burden
don't exist, etc.). I'd just like to say that I will have creatures like
mules when I get done (okay, okay, if). On the other hand, a heavily laden
mule will move slower and be a more susceptible target for bandits ...
>And you should also have letters of credit from merchants and banks etc..
>(which could be recognized as the method by which people are
>"carrying" these huge sums of gold currently).
This depends a lot on the (to steal a Traveller term) tech level of your
design. It may be that we're talking about a time when banking wasn't a very
familiar concept as primarily barter was the order of the day or people were
for the most part very poor (and tended to just hide their wealth, etc.), or
at a time when knowledge of writing was mostly limited to the clergy and/or
nobility. The problem is not as much the huge sums that this or that person
is carrying as much as the problem of a huge number of people carrying this
or that huge sum and very few people's sums ever diminishing substantially.
In a system where gold is assigned a mass, it should also be possible to
offer things in trade, etc. Perhaps the grocer thinks your diamond would
make a fine gift for his daughter who is about to be wed and thus gives you
supplies worth 1.5 times it's normal value, etc.
If you're really interested in reality (you'll need to disregard the
grocer bit), money will be a scare commodity and it will take very little of
it to buy your everyday needs. A few pence for a day's food, a few more for
a room, etc. Thus players shouldn't need to walk around with eighty times
their weight in gold anyway, nor should gems rivalling the crown jewels be
spotted growing on every tree.
>A possible method that would encourage use of gold, would be to allow
>renting of more items than is usual for your mud, but doubling or
>tripling (or quadrupling etc..) rent for these extra items.
>I think many would take advantage of this convenience, and thus get rid of
>much gold.
Hmmm, this is the dumbest point of your entire article (okay, I lack tact ...
I lack a lot of things). We've just been talking about realism and you start
mentioning the Diku concept of rent. Now, to be fair, most permanent
residents would have homes, etc., but I tend to view players as visiting the
locale indefinitely. Reasonable rates would be according to the security and
comfort of the room, extra fees for keeping particularly valuable merchandise
in a strong box, watering and grooming a steed, etc. However, such things
should be reasonable and sensible, not just some luxury tax assigned by
immortals who can't figure out how to assign balance correctly.
William Che
>Well, the mud I am desinging has quite a few fixes to this problem. I
>didn't realize it was a problem, but I am glad that by mud has already
>fixed this. :)
>One of the solutions which will exist on my mud is taxes. I was planning
>on having property (land) taxes, but since this problem exists, income
>tax may also be in order.
>So, what do you all think about having income tax on a mud?
Neat idea! Tax people whenever they rent according to their savings in
the bank and in their "wallet." Taxes can also be use in addition to the
rent fees charged on the player's stuff. Like, for example, the total rent
for the player's stuff is highter then the tax, the receptionists will
charge the player whatever it is due for his stuff. Vise versa for when the
tax is higher value than the "storage fee."
Players can also be taxed every game year to get rid of some of the $ in
the game... Perhaps the tax percentage can be raised if a player's savings
(incomes) is greater then a certain value... Say +1% for every mil? :)
--
William Che . * ________________ _ . ____ *
wc...@vm.poly.edu . . <-_______________|*) . ___==/ \==___
ind...@panix.com . * ~. * | | ~ --==================--
. * * . . | | * / ^/ --=====--
. . . . ______|_|____/___/ . .
. * . * . () . ==__ ....^T/_ .
. . .* . . * --___________|\~ . *. .
. . . * . . * .
"Speed of Darkness: slower or faster than speed of light?"
- Laurie Anderson
Derek Licciardi
an immortal on 2 muds. This is a topic that is discussed everywhere. The
solution to the problem is definately mud specific. Ex
Perilous Realms- This mud has very limited items. Players are quite greedy
when it comes to the equipment they have. There is no rent so players
can keep their items until they get the price that they want. Because
of this many items classified as rare have become nearly extinct. A
common item in game such as a thain girth can very well go for a couple
hundred thousand coins.(OUCH)
Mozart Mud- This mud has a rent system and many characters find that it is just
too expensive to keep all of these items in their inventory so they do
one of two things 1) They sell them 2) They deposit them in the
donation room before they rent. If an item sell for more than a 100k
there it came from the abyss or some high level area not the shire.
These two muds are very different. Their atmoshpheres produce a
totally unique economic situation. So based on this there is no one solution.
I have however had many suggestions thrown my way and I am going to share them
with this group. Use them if you like and smoe if not most you might have
already heard.
Rent- Many formulas can be used here. Different places that have higher or
lower costs to rent is fine but the advent of the recall scroll kinda makes
this null and void. I can just recall and rent where it is cheapest. WileyII
mud did something pretty unique. When you rented in another inn it set your
home there and when you recalled you went to your home. If you wanted to get
to another inn you had to either walk, get summoned, etc etc. Combine this
with the varying rent at different places and it could work.
Having a level based base cost to rent could also work as long as the
formula was not linear(ie level*1000 + items in gp) The idea is to make rent
just as hard to pay for higher characters as it is for newbies. It should
not be so rediculous as to make higher characters get flustered, after all they
are powerfull enogh to have the money to rent for weeks at a time if they want.
Banks- They could charge money to store and protect the players money. Mozart
mud has put a limit on the amount of money one can store in any given bank.
This puts a Cap on the total amount of money one can have at any given time.
It would work better if money had weight there. With the limit in the banks
all an imp has to do is monitor the number of banks on the mud.
Shopkeepers- Make them more aggressive in their selling. If you go in with
a item(ie plate gauntlets) then he will ask to buy them for a reduced cost.
If the player agrees then sold else the player can go through a bargaining
procedure. Give shopkeepers enough money to buy and sell stuff with but not
so much that when they are killed the player characters are rich(anyone
kill Zifnab lately. On some muds you can and he is worth at least a mil coins
if the game doesn't crash often) I can remember killing Zifnab on UBCMUD and
walking out with some 500k copper coins = 500k gp on other muds.
Levels/practiceing/gaining- Charge money here. Many have talked about doing
it and I believe Perilous Realms is testing it now. It makes sense that the
thieves guild would want money from a student. In a game like Mozart and
WilleyII where player characters have to go to different areas to gain as they
reach higher levels, it would be easy to put in a level based cost to practice
each practice session. Mozaret Mud could even go as far as to make it cost
more to practice some skills because all the skills there are rated at a diff-
iculty rating(ie it is Easy for a mage to learn Magic Missile but Challenging
for that same mage to learn extra attack one) I think that this would be a
very large money maker and would take a tun of money out of game.
Cross training in classes/Ability increases- This is up to the Imp of a
given mud. UBCDIKU allows characters to cross train in a class that
they don't have. The character pays in experience and never gets better
than fair in the skill. They could also charge coins for each practice
session. Renegade outpost allows characters to visit the Dungeon Master
and get stats raised(I believe not sure though) You could charge a character
x amount of coins (for the spells that need to be cast to perform such a feat)
and x amount of exp(representing the amount of time it will take a character
to get used to the enhanced abilities).
Gambling- I think this one explains itself.
Repair Guy- Simple enough it should be more proffitable for a character to
repair an item rather than junk it and go get another at reboot.
The limiting rent items, and taxes do little more than piss off a player.
There has to be a reason why something is taken from a character. Players
hate taxes in the real world so why would they want them in their fantasy
world.
The task of each Imp out there is to find the appropriate balance
in their game and the adjust the balance as he or she sees fit.
Hope this helps the discussion.
Kressilac of Mozart
Craig Mohr
>INFLATION hmm what a topic. I have been a player on numerous muds and have
>an immortal on 2 muds. This is a topic that is discussed everywhere. The
>solution to the problem is definately mud specific. Ex
>
>Perilous Realms- This mud has very limited items. Players are quite greedy
> when it comes to the equipment they have. There is no rent so players
> can keep their items until they get the price that they want. Because
> of this many items classified as rare have become nearly extinct. A
> common item in game such as a thain girth can very well go for a couple
> hundred thousand coins.(OUCH)
Point I hate rent always did as a player and have decided to do my BEST to not
have to charge players rent if i dont have to.
We have just put in what is turning out to be a VERY nice system that so far
has kept the money on the mud to a minimin. More on this later since you touch
on it below. But except for one bug which allowed players to get negitive gold
and turn it into loads of gold (those unsigned ints..) I dont think we have had
anyone over maybe 750k in gold. (May actually be a bit higher I'd have to look
again to be sure, i know no one has over 1.999 mill for sure). Another aspect
of this is that because of some of the affects I will be allowing limited items
(not unique items) to have larger limits now.
This is definatly something i want to do and have several ideas on how to do it.
We have just rewritten our shop files/formats and may be able to do something
like this soon. I dont see why items should always stay at the same flat rate
anyway :) Something along the lines of # sold - # bought times some value plus
maybe a bit of haggling code or something like that..
(Hmm a new skill haggle :} )
>Levels/practiceing/gaining- Charge money here. Many have talked about doing
>it and I believe Perilous Realms is testing it now. It makes sense that the
Ahh here it is! Yes indeed! We are actually charging for the skills they want
to learn not the levels they gain. We also have a difficulty rating on our
skills and spells as i see mozart does. Our rating can be from 1 to 32767 or
something like that (never can remember :} ) and it will take you the dificulty
value to learn 1 practice (100 pracs is a 100% skill or spell). We can then
charge for 1 practice also say 5 coins per prac now at difficulty 2 thats 10
coins to learn it for 1 total practice (or 1%). ALSO (grin) to prevent joe mage
from holding out and only learning meteor swarm, shriek and hellfire we have a
prerequisite system and spells are broken down into "spheres" of knowledge.
IE you cant learn chain lightning before lightning. AND (even bigger grin)
spells now take components (not all of them just some) which must be bought
(for now) or found around the world. We also let casters make the choice to
not use components but have to use extra mana to make up for it. (Note about
components, They dont have to carry around 999k components in their inventories
there is a special spell pouch that will carry them and some components are/will
even be useable more than once!).
>each practice session. Mozaret Mud could even go as far as to make it cost
>more to practice some skills because all the skills there are rated at a diff-
>iculty rating(ie it is Easy for a mage to learn Magic Missile but Challenging
>for that same mage to learn extra attack one) I think that this would be a
>very large money maker and would take a tun of money out of game.
yep.
>
>Cross training in classes/Ability increases- This is up to the Imp of a
>given mud. UBCDIKU allows characters to cross train in a class that
>they don't have. The character pays in experience and never gets better
Dont like this idea its not really that "fantasy real" just do multiclass
(Which also sucks IMO hense the change we have taken at PR to fix this).
>Gambling- I think this one explains itself.
>
>Repair Guy- Simple enough it should be more proffitable for a character to
>repair an item rather than junk it and go get another at reboot.
>
>The limiting rent items, and taxes do little more than piss off a player.
>There has to be a reason why something is taken from a character. Players
>hate taxes in the real world so why would they want them in their fantasy
>world.
Tried this on PR lasted a whole 1 day before we had heard enough about
it sucking rotten eggs and removed it.
>
> The task of each Imp out there is to find the appropriate balance
>in their game and the adjust the balance as he or she sees fit.
>
>Hope this helps the discussion.
>
>Kressilac of Mozart
-Deth Imp Perilous Realms
140.211.111.20 2150
John Brothers
My goodness. :) Do you play on every silly-based diku???? :)
In article <C5JJ6...@ulowell.ulowell.edu> dlic...@cs.ulowell.edu (Derek Licciardi) writes:
>
>Perilous Realms- This mud has very limited items. Players are quite greedy
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Mozart Mud- This mud has a rent system and many characters find that it is just
^^^^^^^^^^
>this null and void. I can just recall and rent where it is cheapest. WileyII
^^^^^^^
>if the game doesn't crash often) I can remember killing Zifnab on UBCMUD
^^^^^^????
(if they have zifnab, they are at least partially based off of Silly)
>session. Renegade outpost allows characters to visit the Dungeon Master
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Whew! :)
Derek Licciardi
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