A common 'feature' in many MMO games, is the dropping of coin/currency from monsters when killed. Add to this the unlimited amount of currency an ingame npc vendor has to purchase 'loot' from a player with. This inevetably leads to an increase over time of the amount of currency in players hands, and a corresponding increase over time of the price of dropped items. With no real restriction on the flow of currency into the game, mudflation increases constantly over time.
This significantly disadvantages newer players to the game; especially those that arrive some time after a server is first opened. Those starting late, have the same ability to make coin as those that started early, but their coin can buy them significantly less now than it could have at any time in the past.
What do people think about ways to control this ('plat-sinks' or other) and/or if this is simply a to-be-expected part of online gaming in semi-perpetual worlds?
They have mentioned a few ways of combating mudflation in the past. One is by allowing items to be sacrificed for long-term buffs.
There are many money sinks that can be added to help reduce these problems. Tradeskills are a big one. If players need the services of alchemist for potions, cooks for food, or blacksmiths to repair armor or sharpen weapons, all of those components used to do so will remove money from the economy. Reagents for powerful spells and abilities is another way. Then there are your run of the mill goods and services offered by vendors.
Wow. That's a pretty huge topic. Important, no doubt about it, but huge.
First, I'd argue at least one premise; That new players are disadvantaged by the effects of mudflation. In many ways those players can have a striking advantage monatarily over those players who started at the servers inception or shortly after. Consider the fact that after players have started to collect the limitless cash you refer to, they are far more likely to spend what has become to them trivial amounts of it on mundane items. Tradeskills are the predominant area relevent here, because the lowest level characters are able to collect the most basic of tradeskill components and sell them to the wealthy elder playerbase. This is easily demonstrated by logging in to an existing EQ or EQ2 server (or Project1999), running around newbie land for an hour, and then selling spider silks or wolf meat to players exponentially more pp than you require to get your first 20 levels worth of spells. Brand new players today can (and do) make a comparative fortune over what the elder players made when they started. And this cash is used to buy gear that would have been well beyond the means of a new server's players.
Which brings me to a second point .... On a new server there are limited quantities of useful gear items that have been both looted and outgrown. So there are fewer available on the open market, and the values of them higher as a result. Supply and demand, basic economics. As the server ages there are more and more people discovering new lands, getting new loot, and outgrowing that which they discovered in earlier areas. The gear at the lower tiers then becomes less valuable, and more accessible to newer players. Couple that with the fact that the newer players are able to sell more mundane items for more than they had been able to (see first point, above), and you see how the new player now has access to better gear, earlier in their character's career, for less comparative value in coin than they could have before.
Now this is not to say that your question is without merit. It is absolutely a known quantity in MMOs that over time the balance in the value of currency can get way out of whack. So much so that things that were treasures at the onset are now sold for millions of pp; a previously unthinkably huge horde of coin.
I personally think it's very worthwhile for the developers to create money sinks in the economy. The fewer coins that exist in the gameworld at a given time, the greater the value of each is, lessoning the likelyhood that the value of your Whoseewhatsit of Force has more than 5 zeros on it.
I personally like the abiility to buy items with in-game items that act as monthly subscription tokens, which when consumed grant you a greater level of game access. It's a great money sink. But it also inherently ties the games economy model to real world wealth rather than restricting it to in-game accomplishment. That's another beast to tackle in another debate.
Other great ways are to provide small scale buffs from food, drink, or other consumable items. Nothing that gives a game-changing advantage but that provide a small but measurable effect in xp-gained over time, as an example. Or paying for ports to more convenient locations than where the "normal" destinations are.
Cosmetics seem to be a fantastic sink for cash. Appearance clothing, vanity pets, housing and it's decoration/furnishing. These are very effective in removing notable cash from the game world for those people who don't really buy much and keep collecting more money just as a side effect of playing. (I'm one of these kinds of players.)
Other things I've seen discussed;
- Paying NPCs to produce tradeskill items in lieue of your time spent doing so yourself. This has the advantage of removing cash from the economy, but can negatively effect the value another player might gain by performing the same service.
- Paying NPC's to collect mundane tradeskill items. This can, again, effect the service being provided by players.
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I realize this is not meant to be an economic game but, from a systems perspective, I would LOVE to see a dynamic economy.
For example:
- Launch the game with a predetermined amount of "digital money" (1 million gp value as an example) spread across all the vendors around the world.
- As monsters "create money" through drops (cash and items) players would collect and sell to vendors.
- As players sell items, the vendors would have less to "spend" on buying items from said players so, prices should go down (more supply, less demand). **wrinkle #1: have this vary by item - if players are selling 1 million rusty short swords, those prices drop faster than for players selling 100K cracked staffs - or if players are not selling many/any items, the price should go up from their baseline.**
- Anything over the vendor's "allowance" would be destroyed each day/week/month so the amount of money within the economy would remain realatively stable and (hopefully) slow or eliminate MUDflation.
- Items common in one area should be rare in another. Players may find that a cracked staff can be bought for 5g in one city due to a glut in the market of that city but sells for 1p in another because not many players are selling there. For new players who are perpetually short of money, taking a load of ore from one city where it is cheap (right next to the goblin mines and lots of players selling) to another city (where crafting is popular) might present a decent money making opportunity. And getting there (alive) could be an adventure all in itself.
Building this would be an insane amount of work to set up and monitor but it sure would be fun to see in action.
Dullahan said:They have mentioned a few ways of combating mudflation in the past. One is by allowing items to be sacrificed for long-term buffs.
There are many money sinks that can be added to help reduce these problems. Tradeskills are a big one. If players need the services of alchemist for potions, cooks for food, or blacksmiths to repair armor or sharpen weapons, all of those components used to do so will remove money from the economy. Reagents for powerful spells and abilities is another way. Then there are your run of the mill goods and services offered by vendors.
Great ideas here Dullahan.
These ideas would all remove money from the economy, but I feel the rate would not be nearly enough to combat the systemic problems MMO economies face. Many games already have these sinks in place, but still suffer from rampant inflation.
With the never-ending printing press of NPC coin drops and bottomless pockets of NPC vendors, the players will always extract more coin from the game than it costs them to do the extraction. In other words, the cost of adventuring cannot exceed the reward from adventuring. Non-adventuring money sinks can help offset this: NPC crafting components, horse rental, boat or caravan travel costs, etc, but there is a realtively low threshold on how high these can go. More needs to be done outside of these systems.
If we can assume NPC vendors are going to have infinite funds, and NPC's we kill are going to drop coin along with items with a vendor sale value, then the challenging variable here is time played. To use EQ as an example, Player A plays 8 hours per day while Player B plays 2 hours per day. Both Player A and Player B have the same needs in terms of gear and spells (the largest cost of living items). However, the earning potential of Player A outpaces that of Player B by a large margin due to additional play time. Player-traded item cost will reflect this gap over time, resulting in item inflation. To make this worse, if necessary items are not realistically aquireable via adventuring (poor drop rates, poor itemization, poor spawn rates, etc) or crafting (no viable crafted items exist or costs are too high to make viable items), they will likey turn to the player economy to fill in the gaps to remain viable. However, without the time required to farm the coin to satisfy the now inflated market prices, Player B will either quit playing because they cannot progress effectively, or turn to RMT to provide the funds, which further compounds the inflation problem. This is what we saw happen to the EQ economy over time. Guilds can offset this by offering help or passing out excess items, but enough people chose the path of least resistance (RMT) to compound the problem further.
Player A now has a desire to twink a new character, but the prices are now unobtainium even for him. The solution? RMT for Player A. RMT became the norm. This lead to SOE legitimizing RMT via Kronos which cost $17.99 each from the cash shop (https://www.everquest.com/krono) and when consumed, provide 30 days of game time. Kronos typically command an in-game currency value of several thousand plat. Today, its not uncommon to see players rejecting plat entirely and instead insisting on trading soley in Kronos. A huge windfall of cash for Daybreak by exploiting an economy that players can only fully participate in with sanctioned RMT.
Kronos aside, this is a classic example of inflation in a game economy: Unlimited NPC vendor coin + unlimited NPC drops + available time = potential wealth, given all players have the same needs, but varying amount of available play time. Market prices for the most useful items will continually adjust upward comensurate with demand among the most wealthy players. Without accessible alternative means, this creates a strong demand for RMT which severely accelerates the problem.
So the problem has been identified, but what is the solution? Passing out gear like candy helps (socialism), but kills any sense of accomplishment and can negatively impact tradeskills (free enterprise). Making tradeskills expensive would help (tax the evil corporations!!!), but this does not apply evenly across all players, as I assume tradeskills will be optional. Gear repairs help, but that doesn't apply evenly to all either (tank classes will hold a high burden cost). We could limit NPC vendor coin, which could create some interesting gameplay opportunities, but I can't see a path where this results in a positive outcome. Time is the variable at play here, but taxing players based on time doesnt sound like a very good business model, haha.
How about a sales tax with a rate that increases based on transaction cost? The higher the cost of the player to player trade, the higher the tax rate. The scale of the tax rate could be dev controlled based on the current state of the economy. This could indeed remove A LOT of money from the economy, if needed. This would also support bartering, which would be tax free. I'm not 100% sold on any of these solutions, but I like the variable sales tax based on transaction size the most, in conjuction with other traditional money sinks that Dullahan outlined.
Thoughts? Ideas?
One overlooked aspect of MUF-flation is intentional inflation/devaluing of items.
Sure, as time goes on more items and money enter the game than leave the game. That's expected and cannot really be controlled.
But what happens is the developers intentionally inflate loot to entice players. You'll usually see this happen when expansions come out. Developers will intentionally raise the quality of loot for any given level to entice players to buy the new expansion. What this does is artificially push items down the food chain.
For example, in the base game a level 50 can expect to loot a ring that gives +50 HP and a level 40 can expect to loot a ring that gives +40 HP. In the expansion a level 50 can expect to loot a ring that gives +60 HP and a level 40 can loot a ring that gives +50 HP. What happens to that ring that gives +40 HP? It gets pushed down the food chain and is now only 'good' for lower levels.
As time goes on the intentional inflation really ruins the entry/mid-level parts of the game. Only the very newest content has a decent economy.
Bigdogchris, I think what you're saying is accurate, but I wouldnt inherently characterise it as bad. Yes, it's true that a looted item in the mid levels effectively looses value when new more powerful expansion items come out. Yes, this means that someone who loots that item in the mid levels could sell it for less. But it also means that players who dont have the effective power in game terms to loot it themselves can now obtain it more easily because it's cheaper. Also, with the more powerful and more expensive loot available in the new content, higher level players conquering that content now have more coin and will more readily spend higher amounts of it on things that the lowest level players can obtain like tradeskill items.
As the game matures, if the newest players are resourceful they can earn more, obtain more and consequentily achieve more with that gained power in terms of higher level items, earlier and more quickly than they could otherwise. (This is actually a key benefit for replayabiilty for established players, because they dont have to make quite so significant an investment later in the game's lifecycle to start a new character.)
It seems to me that the two biggest factors at play here (players expecting new more powerful loot, and a static rate of exchnage for old-world commodities) are mutually exclusive. You cannot deliver one without impacting the other.
Feyshtey,
In a game where the level cap did not increase when new gear comes out, you would be right about what you're saying.
I believe in a game where you are moderately releasing expansions, say like WoW, you can easily raise the level cap every expansion. By raising the level cap at the same time you introduce the better gear, the players level rise as they consume the gear and the old, upgraded gear will pass back down to the previous level of players. It would not stop inflation, but it would definitely help slow it down.
Personally I think the best way to tackle inflation is having "throw-away" items that are useful but don't really give an advantage to anyone. For example..
- Instead of players being about to buy-out (once only) there homes. How about a rented land system? VR could adjust the rent tax to up or down the inflation if it's getting too high.
- Teleporters that charge a % for instant travel at the main spires/portal of that region or travel and get a boat, but it's alot less.
- Same with Mounts but with tiers of mounts (like they did in eq) .. but not so expensive that's its beyond the rates of current inflation... and this could be controlled with a sales tax as previously mentioned.
There's loads of things they could do.. but the main point being.. Money needs to be "Thrown away". It's the amount in circulation that's the problem.
I don't know if "thrown away" is the right term, but players definitely need to be inclined to spend their money.
Taxes are just one more way of doing it. The problem with taxes or having an economy that scales dynamically (vendors charging more as currency becomes more abundant), is that it can make the early game harder for players. Things they would be expected to buy may become harder to obtain. Any changes of that nature would have to be adjusted to safeguard the early game economy.
There are a few different systems I've seen or thought of that I think might help in this area. One was having a dedicated slot for an item that can only be purchased from vendors. I don't know if this was utilized in live EQ down the line, but I saw it on the Shards of Dalaya emu. The item was a charm, and they ranged in price from a few platinum to millions of platinum. They had several options in each price range that would benefit different kinds of melees and casters. Everyone was always saving their money to dump into a charm, and because the only source of charms was from vendors, that meant a lot of money being removed from the economy on a daily basis.
The vendor charm is somewhat generic, but the idea is sound. Personally, I'd rather see more natural money sinks like those mentioned above. There are many fees and cost of living expenses all around us. Someone just has to apply them to the game world.
Looking back to early EQ, I feel like the economy was fairly well done. The only problem that began to arise a few expansions in was the amount of items that were circulating. Low and even mid level gear became so abundant that it was almost given away. To some degree, that is OK, as it provides a more natural way of expediting low level progression. Its definitely a better alternative than WoW and its clones which boost the exp rates and giving away new items with each expansion that effectively trivialize all previous accomplishment.
However, I would say that a way to remove old items from the economy must exist. That is the idea behind sacrificing items for long term buffs put forth by the devs. I've put forth other ideas on ways to achieve this such as item degredation, but they may not be compatible with what VR have in mind for Pantheon.
I feel one aspect EQ2 did well was transmuting items. You could transmute any item into a craftable material for adornments (Addons to armor and weapons) Fable items had a small chance to turn into very rare building materials. You might have had to transmute several fables to get just one resource.
This helped keep items off the market that might have once been sold and really makes you choose what to do with each item. I know a lot of people would drop a thousand plat buying cheap fables to transmute hoping to get the rare componets needed
Taxes - The kind of system you're talking about is effectively just a sliding cost from the vendors, not really a tax. It's an artificial enforcement of valuation of coin, which likely brings with it a host of other problems. (Hasten Bootstrutter used to want 5,000p for the Jboots. Now he wants 50,000p, so every player is negatively impacted just the way you pointed out).
Recurring payments are something that can and have been used in the past. The problem there is, what's the penalty for non-payment? Rent on your house is an example. Does that mean that if I go on vacation for 2 weeks do I potentially lose access to my house and all my goods until I can play long enough to get enough money saved up again? Compulsory financial obligations tread heavily into the realm of turning a game into a job for me.
Interestingly, the idea of "throw away objects" is something that I brought up in the new features thread that's floating right now. The idea was the EQ2 method of turning a usable piece of gear into a displayable trophy. That trophy is then really only good for being an aesthetic item in a player's house or guildhall. It also makes the item no-trade, which in turn effectively kills the value of that item and removes it from the game economy. Make this transaction a one-time irreversible action and *poof* , economic impact of that item no longer being used is gone. The player has the ability to still sell the item unless they turn it into a trophy, so the intended impact might not be significant. But it might be enough to be meaningful.
Dullahan said: I don't know if "thrown away" is the right term, but players definitely need to be inclined to spend their money.
Well consumable methods of removing money from players. Either or... but the point is there.
Dullahan said: However, I would say that a way to remove old items from the economy must exist. That is the idea behind sacrificing items for long term buffs put forth by the devs. I've put forth other ideas on ways to achieve this such as item degredation, but they may not be compatible with what VR have in mind for Pantheon.
The removal old items isn't really a problem for inflation tho. The more items you have circulating the lower the price it will be for new players... it keeps item prices competitive. The main problem is when new players join the inflation is so out of sync with new players they can't afford anything once the game has been established for a long time.. (which can stop them progressing if they don't find a nice guild/group) removing items/gear will only increase these prices. The only way that would actually work well for new players; would be have everything degrade and crafted... Not sure I'd like to see the game purely handed over to crafting.
Something similar to WoW's black market auction house would be a good way to remove money from the game. The game puts up some rare or exclusive item, say a mount skin, pet, housing decoration,etc with a considerable starting price and let's rich player bid on it. The richer the player on the server are, the more money will be taken out of the economy at each transaction.
Nimryl said:The removal old items isn't really a problem for inflation tho. The more items you have circulating the lower the price it will be for new players... it keeps item prices competitive. The main problem is when new players join the inflation is so out of sync with new players they can't afford anything once the game has been established for a long time.. (which can stop them progressing if they don't find a nice guild/group) removing items/gear will only increase these prices. The only way that would actually work well for new players; would be have everything degrade and crafted... Not sure I'd like to see the game purely handed over to crafting.
I agree that removing old items from the economy increases their value. I agree that inflation generally causes coin to be less valuable and makes a coin buy less over time. On it's face that means that both cause a new player to spend more coins to acquire the same item the longer the game matures.
However, you're not considering the flip side of this scenario. The one in which the same new player can charge considerably more coin for the mundane items he can and does obtain. Primarily this is tradeskill items for which higher level players with much larger balances of coin are willing to pay for so that they dont have to spend time killing mobs that provide them no other benefit or challenge. A new player can charge x-times the price for a stack of spider silk than could a similarly skilled and equipped player in the games infancy. He can amass coin so quickly in fact that he's able to buy things that would have been wholly out of the realm of possibility for an early player. Additionally the new player is able to purchase all the training, spells, travel, food/drink, etc. that are standard game-engine controlled consumables for comparitively rock-bottom prices over what the early player paid. (The same quantity of coin, but the coin has far less value, so essentially he's paying far less.)
A system that removes some items from the game world should not be an all or nothing thing. It should be something that players weigh the choice of, and decide which is more beneficial to them at that moment; sell the item to a player, or "throw it away" on a buff, or a trophy conversion, or some other mechanic. Those benefits can be tweaked, the implimentation can be modified to include/exclude items, and the resulting behavior of the playerbase measured to make it balance.
Nimryl said:The removal old items isn't really a problem for inflation tho. The more items you have circulating the lower the price it will be for new players... it keeps item prices competitive. The main problem is when new players join the inflation is so out of sync with new players they can't afford anything once the game has been established for a long time.. (which can stop them progressing if they don't find a nice guild/group) removing items/gear will only increase these prices. The only way that would actually work well for new players; would be have everything degrade and crafted... Not sure I'd like to see the game purely handed over to crafting.
We kind of got off on inflation and the economy, but mudflation is all about keeping the demand for items high and player progression balanced. That is really where I was going with item degredation. If items are eternal and continue to pile up, eventually they become worthless and sense of achievement in the early game suffers.
Dullahan said:Nimryl said:The removal old items isn't really a problem for inflation tho. The more items you have circulating the lower the price it will be for new players... it keeps item prices competitive. The main problem is when new players join the inflation is so out of sync with new players they can't afford anything once the game has been established for a long time.. (which can stop them progressing if they don't find a nice guild/group) removing items/gear will only increase these prices. The only way that would actually work well for new players; would be have everything degrade and crafted... Not sure I'd like to see the game purely handed over to crafting.
We kind of got off on inflation and the economy, but mudflation is all about keeping the demand for items high and player progression balanced. That is really where I was going with item degredation. If items are eternal and continue to pile up, eventually they become worthless and sense of achievement in the early game suffers.
Oh I thought it was the same thing. Disagree with "mud-flation" then. If old things are too easy to get so what? The better/newer gear will be more expensive/better/rarer anyway.
Sounds like your just making new players suffer for the sake of your suffering.. really not fair considering you had the enjoyment of the early days and will have the benefit of the current content/gear too.. Remember there will be less players when the newer players come along... meaning harder to get groups.. harder todo content. + level gaps to consider on top (meaning lots of people won't be your level even if they have re-rolled and an alt.) I dont think this games going to be like totally packed with players... could be wrong but..
Nimryl said:Oh I thought it was the same thing. Disagree with "mud-flation" then. If old things are too easy to get so what? The better/newer gear will be more expensive/better/rarer anyway.
Sounds like your just making new players suffer for the sake of your suffering.. really not fair considering you had the enjoyment of the early days and will have the benefit of the current content/gear too.. Remember there will be less players when the newer players come along... meaning harder to get groups.. harder todo content.
The answer to "so what?", is that the game experience for later players is dramatically different. They never have the same feelings of risk vs. reward of those who came before them.
The flip side to that is that an established player faces closer to the same challenge the second, third or twenty-second time they start a new character. Whether that is a positive or negative is open to interpretation.
Well I think your forgetting that you won't have as many people leveling later on in a mmo. Even with the progeny system. Your just gunna keep new players "down" in the ranks on purpose. If people have no chance of catching up... I'm tell you now they'll move on to another mmo in which they can... I slugged it out in EQ as a new player and it was PAINFUL. I loved the game and still do.. but it was terribly hard if no one helps you out... at the start/launch of the EQ progression servers it was easier to get groups/exp/friends and gear.. later on if you returned back.. it was hellish. Krono also ruined the economy like to crazy levels. So considering that... how am I meant to progress with gear denial (via economy) and fewer groups? magic? my only choice was RMT (krono), which I flat out will NEVER do. Sorry to say this, but most people don't have as much patience as I do.
I've had lots of help btw from nice people in the past.. but it was always rare and never enough to catch up. It was like chasing a carrot on a stick. I dont see the problem myself because there will always be better/higher gear. + items in EQ were never that saturated on the market anyways.. the items were rare drops within themselves + alts/twinks to gear up.
+ if the item got as low as its base sell price on a vendor.. people would vendor them anyway..
Nimryl said:Well I think your forgetting that you won't have as many people leveling later on in a mmo. Even with the progeny system. Your just gunna keep new players "down" in the ranks on purpose. If people have no chance of catching up... I'm tell you now they'll move on to another mmo in which they can... I slugged it out in EQ as a new player and it was PAINFUL. I loved the game and still do.. but it was terribly hard if no one helps you out... at the start/launch of the EQ progression servers it was easier to get groups/exp/friends and gear.. later on if you returned back.. it was hellish. Krono also ruined the economy like to crazy levels. So considering that... how am I meant to progress with gear denial (via economy) and fewer groups? magic? my only choice was RMT (krono), which I flat out will NEVER do. Sorry to say this, but most people don't have as much patience as I do.
I've had lots of help btw from nice people in the past.. but it was always rare and never enough to catch up. It was like chasing a carrot on a stick. I dont see the problem myself because there will always be better/higher gear. + items in EQ were never that saturated on the market anyways.. the items were rare drops within themselves + alts/twinks to gear up.
Its not about "keeping them down", its about maintaining risk vs reward that makes the game enjoyable. I don't know about you, but I enjoyed the feeling of working my way up in older MMOs. I liked it when things didn't come easy and it made my accomplishments more meaningful.
I personally find mudflation seriously harms the experience. When recently returning to p99 for the umpteenth time, I found everything felt trivial. Most low level characters are twinked and the ability to get gear well beyond your level is incredibly easy. This really takes away from the game for me. I had to find people that weren't twinked to play with just so I could enjoy myself.
That isn't to say I don't enjoy twinking or that I don't think it should exist, I simply think it should be a challenging process to be able to do it. That will prevent the above scenario from occuring.
Well ofc that's a problem on a small static mmo enviroment like p99. But I dont think it's a major problem as long as Pantheon has expansions.
+ maybe they could resolve the issue by having raid gear soulbound but named items/drops not. Then it wouldn't matter as much... as raid items should always be better.
First, if you dont get a somewhat steady influx of new players, your game is destined to sunset. They all are, really, but we're talking about the timeline here. Is it 17 years a la EQ? Or is it 2? Or 7?
Second, I think "keeping new players down" is an overstatement and an oversimplification, if not a flat out falsehood. They earn more cash than they ever could when the game released. They have a trove of high level characters attaining gear that serves no purpose to them (unless you use a trivial loot system:YUCK), and they have massive amounts of online data that's been collected and presented to them for use to ease their path.
Hell, I've started characters on a half dozen mature MMO's in the last year, and on every single one of them at some point (and in all but one, at multiple points) a random total stranger has completely unsolicited and with no payment accepted, handed me items far beyond my level which granted me a substantial boost in effectiveness. Why? Because it did them no good, and because selling the item would have netted them such trivial cash as to make the transaction more hassle than its worth. They really just wanted to get the crap out of their inventory, and didnt even want to be bothered with walking to a merchant. Plus it was just a nice gesture. And not an uncommon gesture. My wife and a friend we regularly play with have the same experiences. I'm not overt in games. I dont draw attention to myself. I rarely participate in open chat. So it's not like there's a recognition of me that makes me or my circle some target of generosity over others. No, it's simply that the gear from the low to mid-level content in most mature MMOs is so valueless that people feel no compunction at all in just giving it away. That is hardly holding new players down.
And of the proposed systems, lets say a level 50 with 1000hp gains a 5hp max buff for an hour for handing in a level 5 sword. But he has to walk to the other side of town to get that buff. Does it do that? It's about as meaningful to him as the 5 silver he'd get from selling it to a merchant, so I'd argue he'd be just as likely to give it away as before. Lets say the mechanic is to turn it into a house trophy. Who wants a house trophy a rusty sword? Again, its valueless.