I will keep it short since this is super econ-nerd stuff and most people dont enjoy the spreadsheet warrior lifestyle.
The economy will be the cornerstone of my gameplay, and there is a lot of discussion around auction houses, global or regional, banks, taxes, fees, and delivery. I would like to raise a discussion on currency and will keep it simple:
Over time the game will increase in the amount of currency and items available, depending on how quickly the items are obtained and how quickly currency is obtained there will be an inflation factor. Taking into account variables such as bots and plat/gold sellers etc. it is important to remember that currency will need to exit the economy on a regular basis to maintain economic order.
Multiple currencies:
If there are 2 currencies available, one per major continent (assuming 2 continents, maybe good faction/evil faction money) this will change the dynamic of gameplay and impose not only sales taxes but conversion fees which can be adjusted automatically. This can allow for the development team to keep tabs on total currency in game vs total items in game (if there are markets they will also have total base value of items in game), using these factors the team will be able to see the ratio of total available currency to total item values. With this information the development team will be able to keep a control over the economy and prevent over/under-inflation. For players who enjoy market driven gameplay a multi-currency system will create arbitrage which in itself will help keep a balanced player driven economy. This can also create a dynamic item value situation where supply and demand can change drastically depending on the taxes, conversion rates, and cost of materials available in different regions.
I do not yet know of any games which implement a multi-currency system, and I believe a discussion regarding its pros/cons would be valuable.
toop said:I will keep it short since this is super econ-nerd stuff and most people dont enjoy the spreadsheet warrior lifestyle.
The economy will be the cornerstone of my gameplay, and there is a lot of discussion around auction houses, global or regional, banks, taxes, fees, and delivery. I would like to raise a discussion on currency and will keep it simple:
Over time the game will increase in the amount of currency and items available, depending on how quickly the items are obtained and how quickly currency is obtained there will be an inflation factor. Taking into account variables such as bots and plat/gold sellers etc. it is important to remember that currency will need to exit the economy on a regular basis to maintain economic order.
Multiple currencies:
If there are 2 currencies available, one per major continent (assuming 2 continents, maybe good faction/evil faction money) this will change the dynamic of gameplay and impose not only sales taxes but conversion fees which can be adjusted automatically. This can allow for the development team to keep tabs on total currency in game vs total items in game (if there are markets they will also have total base value of items in game), using these factors the team will be able to see the ratio of total available currency to total item values. With this information the development team will be able to keep a control over the economy and prevent over/under-inflation. For players who enjoy market driven gameplay a multi-currency system will create arbitrage which in itself will help keep a balanced player driven economy. This can also create a dynamic item value situation where supply and demand can change drastically depending on the taxes, conversion rates, and cost of materials available in different regions.
I do not yet know of any games which implement a multi-currency system, and I believe a discussion regarding its pros/cons would be valuable.
I really like the multiple currency idea and have brought it up. There could be money changers, etc. But I was met with some resistance, some fearing it would just add unnecessary complexity to buying/selling, etc. So at this point it's kinda up in the air.
To your other statements: Currency will not generally increase except as more people join the shard. Obviously as more people start playing on a shard, the more mobs will be killed and quests completed, and they'll be building up their wealth as well. But on the whole, if we do it right, the amount of currency in a shard should not simply constantly grow larger because people are constantly earning money. To keep this under control and actually to really make currency have a value, there have to be effective money sinks. There has to be an array of reasons why you the player need to and want to spend money, either buying something from another player, or buying things from merchants and other NPC vendors. If you don't have the sinks, or they are not effective, then yes, there's more and more money and then the money loses value. There are numerous proven to work item sinks. I'll just say at this point that I'm personally not a fan of having to repair your gear, but that's just me at this point.
Now items are a very different story. While Item Sinks are just as important as money sinks we do actually, in a slow and controlled manner, want there to be more and more items in the game. Now this gets into some pretty heavy MUDflation theory crafting. I did write a dev diary a while back: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/blogs/151/70/twinking-good-or-evil-or-in-between
Bottom line, as long as we are introducing new and exciting items into the game, and as long as twinking doesn't get out of hand (meaning the item sinks need to be compelling), slow MUDflation is actually a good thing. I actually think that some mechanics introduced in that last 15 years have actually done more harm than good -- it may be easy to mark something no-trade, or bind-on-equip, or even flat out disallow player to player trading, but IMHO you lose more than you gain. It's worth the extra effort to embrace but slow a MUDflation economic model. At least I sincerely believe that to be true, and it's an issue I've been thinking about and brainstorming with other very smart people since the early 90s, when I started playing MUDs, several years before I started designing EQ. It's by no means a new issue -- I imagine the creators of the first multiplayer online RPG had to deal with it. Heck, someone like Raph Koster could probably create a documentary on it :)
Hey Toop, someone who had the same thoughts! We talked about that Idea on multiple currencys on our VoT Game Economics Show. Its a cool idea. But it`s definitely something that would need to be duscussed and talked about. Its something that hasn`t been done to date with the thoughts you and we have behind it. Yes there have been multiple currencys in multiple MMO`s but not the same way we would like to see it done.
Toop,
Yeah this is a great idea and like yarnila said we discussed this very subject. I's quite a hot topic and we are all passionate about it. Ill PM you the link to our show episode about this subject. It was a great conversastion and many great ideas were brought up.
One of the things i enjoyed in VG was deconstruction. Make every single piece of gear deconstructable. In VG, being able to get dusts and such to customize your gear with a variety of procs, passives, stats, etc based on different dusts of all types and rarities was a HUGE part of the greatness that was VG crafting. Make even rare dropped gear deconstructable and have it yield appropriate materials, dusts, etc. Require a commensurate skill crafter to break it down, and to use the materials. This keeps gear moving out of the system and serves as a purpose to have a high master level crafter at end game.
I think gear repair is a great idea that is realistic. I do not care for gear degradation like in DAOC where it wears out a little each time you fix it, but i think repairing it is a reasonable thing. This should be done by crafters as well but require reagents that cost money, and maybe be done by NPCs on the fly for more cost and maybe a little less effectiveness before the next repair. Some other modern stuff that i think is a useful addition to games without making them boring and super easy are things like mailing items (cost of postage is a money sink), obviously reagents for teleporting around (money sink and limits fast travel), costs to hire and maintain NPC vendors if those are added, and maybe something like dungeons that have an admission fee? Not literally, but maybe something like a sealed door that requires you put in a gold coin into a magical stone bowl and it is melted down into a one use key that breaks after allowing you entry every time? Something that just adds another drain on cash flow.
We should have local banking with a large central bank that is run by agreement between all of the major powers. It would keep the rules so the local banks do not cheat.
Just theorycrafting,
We could have small local loans available that has some interest attached to the loan as a money sink. The loan would be secured by the persons licence to buy and sell. If a person gets too far in arrears all of the money made from any sales that person makes will go to the loan until paid off.
The quests that could be built off of this system could be pretty cool too. Doing work for the Central Bank would require a person that has excellent character based on some choices made on ethical quests they have run into as they leveled up. Kind of like having Faction with the bank.
This adds another layer in addition to the governments/kingdoms that define a race's homeland, as it provides another power in the world that is not racial.
The primary focus of the Central bank of Pantheon:
toop said:I will keep it short since this is super econ-nerd stuff and most people dont enjoy the spreadsheet warrior lifestyle.
Interesting issue :)
Well I belong to such nerds and just to amuse myself I created an economy model of an MMO with target to estimate inflation (how much does the total monetary mass increase with time).
Besically I postulated that money earned in quests was negligible so that the monetary mass was only created by killing mobs .
Then I linked the monetary increase to the number of players on server, to their average time of play, to the %tage of time spent killing mobs and to the money dropped per mob (variable with level because high level mobs drop more than low level mobs) .
With some educated assumptions one of the main conclusions of my economy model was that inflation was accelerating with the average level of the players on the server .
It corresponds to the common sense after all - when everybody is level 1 the monetary mass increase is small and when everybody is max level the increase of the monetary mass is several orders of magnitude larger .
How much it makes per time unit (f.ex a month real time) depends on how fast the average level converges to max level . In modern MMOs this happens very fast so that we indeed experience very strong inflation already after a few monts after release .
Btw this phenomenon doesn't change if there are 2 or more currencies .
Another conclusion of the model was that money sinks would have to be quite huge (in %tage of the total monetary mass) if the inflation (increase of the monetary mass) was to be kept reasonable (e.g single digit number per month of real time) even in times where the average level is near to the max level .
Actually the money sinks are only efficient for players at or near to the max level .
Another way would be to regulate the offer meaning that the money (or items sellable to NPC what is the same thing) dropped by mobs would be variable with the monetary mass. This works but I suspect that it would be difficult to implement .
Well anyway as beside us 2 I am not sure that other people are interested in details of such "gory" analysis, I better stop here too :)
I like the multiple currency idea also, it seems to be a bit more realistic than money that works the same everywhere. I would imagine that it could be manipulated as needed in a way that the players might not even notice it too much. I used to go to a money changer while traveling, but now they aren't really needed since I can go to an ATM in just about every country and get the local currency. My bank charges a fee, certainly, but they are the ones doing the work now, not me. I am by no means an economist, far from it, but it would add an interesting twist to the game, even so far as to effect village economies etc. You might stumble upon a village where your cash goes a lot farther, or not far at all, depending on its location. Or maybe that village doesn't use coins, but gems instead. I guess it depends on how much work Aradune wants to do :)
toop said: I will keep it short ....
Deadshade said: ... beside us 2 ...
Make that 3....
As players level up, they earn cash and items through killing mobs.
This is simplistic, but no less valid for all that. Like you, I would ignore cash from quests as negligible. Broadly speaking characters earn cash and items. Both 'vendor loot' and cash obviously fall directly in the +money pasrt of the MUD-flation equation. Other 'Loot' is more complex, but is ultimately either retained within (some) players ownership or sold to NPCs. Retained 'loot' does not add to the total of cash at hand in the economy, but reduces expenditure (don't have to go kill mobs to earn enough cash to buy the sword if you looted one). Cash transferred between players has no effect.
The rate of cash-earned is a function of level. Higher level mobs drop more. Bigger items and more cash. This may lead you to consider that MUD-flation is a a direct function of mean level of the server... which you assume is why more mature servers tend to have greater inflation... but this is not so. While the rate of cash earned rises with level so do many of the 'sinks'. However they do not scale well - all but falling apart by end-game level. Essentially the formula to study is :
+Cash-in-system = (+Cash_dropped +Items_Sold) +(Items_Retained*Item_Trade_Ratio) -Cash_spent
where Item_Trade_Ratio is between 0.0 and 1.0 (high = bad)
As Brad mentions in his Blog post, there need to be a series of layered 'sinks' to remove cash from the system. Typically these have been either 'brute force' item limits (eg NO_DROP, NO_TRADE flags) or cash sinks in the form of 'overheads' (eg reagents, spells bought from trainer etc). The problem is that these just don't scale.
Consider a simple example :
Level 8 Wizard buys his 6 level 8 spells.... these cost him all his cash.
Level 54 Cleric buys his spells from a PC or researches it.... no matter the expense it goes to a player.
This, perhaps, illustrates what I mean when I say that many of these 'sinks' did not scale. At higher levels on towards end-game level, costs do rise... but they are generally ones paid to other players, or constitute time sinks rather than monetary ones. At max level, if you have bought your spells, your only NPC bought items are likely reagents for spells or crafting. These make up a tiny fraction of your earning potential.
Sinks that have a chance of scaling well:
1. Situational Gear: Since in PTF you will likely need a Hammer *and* an ace .... not to mention cold gear, hot gear and ... errr pink gear for all i know! This means these items will be retained to add to the multiple sets of gear you need to have at hand. This should drastically reduce both the Item_Sold and Item_Trade_ratio.
2. Upgrade Gear: Brad hinted about quests that provide and 'upgrade' to your items that need the old item as part of the quest. This eliminates much of the 'extra' items derived from questing. This will slightly reduce +Items_Sold. This scales very well since there is no change in ratio of effect based on level.
3. NPC Buffs : Also mentioned was the offering of long duration buffs in return for sacrificing items at NPC temples/sites. Assuming the 'power' of the buff is related directly to the item sacrificed, then this will also scale well. If these buffs are useful, then it will also have a major impact on any glut of specific items on the market. This will thus lower +Items_Sold and Item_Trade_Ratio; additionally act as a balancing factor on the market place by removing all the lowest price items of sufficient power to generate buffs.
4. Collectibility : Since there is intent to have items phased in and out from loot tables over time - revamping the item names, as well as perhaps look and exact specs - this will create orphaned items. As they will no longer be dropping, these will become rarer and hence, collectible. This will likely only affect a small sector of the player-base, but very rare collectibles would have disproportinately high prices and so have a major 'sink' effect on the economy far in excess of the 'pre-orphan' value. The nett effect will be to reduce Item_Trade_Ratio a small amount and to lock capital out of the system.
5. Alts : Since players can (generally) only play one character at a time, Alts form a self-imposed cash sink. Twinking the Alt, providing the needed sets of spells etc all eat into free cash and lock up items into the Alt gear sets. With the idea of multiple situational gear sets, this is a very powerful sink. This scales well initially, but fades as the Alt reaches the level of the Main. These act over an extended period though, thus making them very effective at reducing inflation.
6. Progeny : These would have almost the same MUD-flation effects as Alts, except the scope and duration would be longer. While the need for 'extra' gear would seem to have gone (they have gear from main) the reality is they need gear of 'appropriate' level - this in turn means at least 5 tiered sets of gear (multiple for situational). There would be a sever tail-off in effect from this sink as the Progeny approached the original Main level, but this would not drop below the original level of the Main in any case.
7. Consumables : Both in terms of food/drink and spell reagent, these are a good sink initially, but weaken drastically by mid-level. The only way to keep them working well is to ensure that the higher end reagents are obtained primarily from NPC and not players. Reagents for teleports could be crafted - but the crafting must use a vendor sold reagent if these are to be effective. Same for any portals or gates etc. Higher end crafted consumables must have need of higher-tier (and hence, higher price) reagents for their creation. The crafter will pass on this cost to the PC buyer - but ultimately the reagent costs will be taken out of the system via the NPC. this may be particularly effective if used with dyes.
8. Appearance: The act of adding a dye to items can be repeated.... and will be. This is a form of crafting that is not based on supply and demand. The demand is continuous. In addition, if they were to introduce a 'Hair Salon' - whether player crafted or otherwise - this would also have almost unlimited demand. In these cases, as long as there is an NPC bought reagent or two in the mix, this will act as an effective sink. Since the item is consumed, all the cash is removed from the system, not just the component purchased from the NPC. This could be extended to a 'Beauty Salon' where you could get make-up added, or perhaps even a 'Tattoo-Parlour' (though this should be permanent).
9. Tax : Simple taxes or fees tend not to scale well. A sales tax will - but these are fairly rare in MMOs. More common are permits, fees etc. These tend to be of varying amounts, but rarely scale well. Even fees considered expensive at level 25 are almost trivial by level 50. They should still be applied, but bear in mind that they will not scale particularly well.
10. End-Level : There can be a set of 'end-level' quests or other events with a steep cost base. These only really act as a small levy since they will, inevitably, be one-off fees. There is no real scaling as such - but since they are aimed at end-level characters they are 'pre-scaled' and so are effective - it is just that there will never be enough of them to make a real impact.
11 Guilds: Guilds and other trade organisations can act as a source of sinks. To improve the guild infrastructure may cost influence with NPCs, require fees, or other activities which either remove cash from the system or require the concerted effort of the guild to accomplish. while these do not scale well, they do have a slight braking effect on overall +Cash_Gained.
I am sure there is more.
Citation:
List of some items taken from Brad's Blog: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/blogs/151/70/twinking-good-or-evil-or-in-between
Evoras said:
+Cash-in-system = (+Cash_dropped +Items_Sold) +(Items_Retained*Item_Trade_Ratio) -Cash_spent
Yes this is what I have used . In addition I developped a quite complete model of the RATE of cash dropped (rate being amount of money per time unit - f.ex a real time day) .
It is necessary to use rates because otherwise we have just a photograph of the instantaneous situation .
If we are interested by evolutions in time (what was my case) , then rates are primary variables .
Now when I said that in my model the money sinks were always negligible compared to money dropped , it was meant to be the rates .
And why the money spending rate is negligible compared to the money dropped rate ?
Because the mob killing activity is almost a continuous variable while the money spending variable is a discrete variable .
In other words if 200 players kill mobs and increase the monetary mass during an hour, only a very small fraction of those 200 will spend something during this hour (or even NEED to spend anything during this hour) . Follows that the rate of spending is generally small compared to the rate of dropping.
Many of the money sinks are 1 time spendings (spells, armour, weapons, trade skill material) . The rest is generally optional (reagents, consumables) .
That's why I wrote that if the rates of money spent and money dropepd should be of similar magnitude (to keep inflation low) then the money sinks would need to be huge in absolute value to compensate the very small rates .
This seems to be impossible to realize at high level because the highest the level the less the need to purchase anything from NPC.
In all games I know (EQ included) high level characters are overflowing with money and they are exclusively interested by very high level drops which, by definition, change nothing at the monetary mass .
It is this kind of players which makes 90 % (and probably more) of the monetary inflation because he still kills (and he kills the mobs which bring the greatest cash per kill) but he spends little to nothing to NPC .
@Deadshade
You are prfectly right. I only used a 'simple' snapshot formula as I wanted people to see the 'balance' of cash-in vs cash-out (which is an easier model to understand for many - non-mathematicians often struggle with rates of change). As yuo say though - it is what I called 'scaling' and you correctly allude to ... most 'cash sinks' are actually intermittent fees which start out large (compared to income) but quickly recede into nothing.
The only online model I have seen come close to matching higher-level incomes is property in EQ2. The ongoing costs for rents was very high for mid-levels (though again, it tailed off at higher levels) and did act as a big tax on income. The only real problem was that it was optional!
If I had to look at the economic model and ask ... 'how can i slow inflation?' ...
1. Ensure 'coin' drops only comes from intelligent mobs, and in tiny ammounts.
2. All other drops should be 'skin', 'pelts', 'bone', 'feathers', 'scales', 'blood' etc
3. NPC vendors have stricly limited cash reserves to buy with (with set replenish rates).
4. NPC vendors only buy based on their appraisal (won't pay for 'magic' unless they can tell it is)
5. NPC will lower prices offered if players sell too many (supply vs demand)
6. NPC all have a pre-existing economic model/network (village -> town -> city)
In other words - there are 2 ways cash is generated by players. From cash drops (coins) and from items sold to NPC vendors. The first needs to be reduces drastically and mainly replaced with 'reagents' and crafting components. The second needs to be severely limited. NPC Merchants cannot have an infinite supply of cash if you are to try to slow inflation.
Would these stop inflation? Probably not - but the model could be made to slow it dramatically. This would keep people in a lower coin type, may even force bartering in some cases and would let crafters be the main link between people's loot and actual servces and cash. Quite a LOT of tuning would be needed to get it to work without crashing the economy though.
What do you think? Possible/not ?
@ Evoras
Yes I see that we are on the same frequency .
I think that the difference between us is that you consider inflation as a general problem while I see it only as a high level problem .
For instance EQ got it exactly upside down - low level characters had very low incomes (money&items dropped) and huge cash sinks (spells, trade skill material, equipment, food&drink) while high level characters had high incomes and negligible cash sinks .
The result was that as long the proportion of max level characters was low, the inflation was virtually non existent but when this proportion started to be significant, inflation exploded .
That's why if curbing inflation was an issue, I would focus only on high level characters . This means that very expensive cash sinks should be introduced that apply only to high/max level players without penalising the whole population . For example your proposals, especially 3, 5 and 6 would be detrimental even for low level players who already struggle economically anyway and don't contribute to the inflation at all .
Possible means to focus on high level characters only could be :
- an asset tax above a certain threshold . If you have over 1000 PP (just an example) every T (some time period) a tax is deducted from your cash . Below 1000 it is 0 .
- the price the NPC offer for your looted items is inversely proportional to the total of your assets (NPC Smith : "Ah dear Ethoras you have already sold us so many fine steel swords that we can't afford to give you the same price anymore ") .
- above some high level threshold the ability to trade your high price looted items against buffs and consumables
- a necessity to repair weapons and armor above some high level .
- a big tax on transfers of money and items (twinking) from a character with big assets to their low level "poor" alt . This tax of course doesn't apply to characters with low assets .
This kind of measures has the advantage to leave the majority of the players alone while impacting only those who are the cause of high inflation .
I don't know, maybe I'm way off here, but what about program driven NPC vendors that deal in local economies to slow mudflation.
Example:
I want to buy toothpicks. They sell for 1 cp ea. today. Someone buys them all up and puts them back on the market at 4 cp ea. Someone else buys them and does the same and now they are 6 cp ea. Mudflation. The program driven NPC corrects the market in that given area by offering them at 2 cp ea. driving the price back to within an uninflated range.
The NPC doesn't always do this in every market, nor for every item listed in a market. It may rotate. Toothpicks sell for 2 cp ea. here for the next two months. They sell for 3 cp ea in the next closest market prompting local trade and sell for 6 cp ea. on the next continent prompting global trade.
I get too comfortable buying toothpicks at 2 cp ea. and become complacent. Suddenly I realize the price has changed. It went up to 3 cp ea. Tommorrow it is 4 cp ea. and 5 cp ea. the day after. The opposite is happening over on the next continent. I find to get a good buy on toothpicks now I may have to horse trade in a far away place. Or I may actually find that I have a few left over toothpicks that I never used sitting in inventory. I bought them at 2 cp ea. I can now sell them to players in my local market for 4 cp ea and double my money which has still reduced mudflation by capping the maximum I can raise my price and still sell my product.
I don't know exactly how it all works, but I do know I have played in more than one game where the programming went through the market place buying certain items to churn the pot, so to speak, of economic growth for those items. If it can buy up items to produce growth then it can certainly add items to slow it as well.
Edit: To help clear up my original idea. I am talking about a program that monitors the marketplace and sells marketplace items through an NPC thereby controlling the market prices and slowing inflation.
Klumpedge said:I don't know, maybe I'm way off here, but what about program driven NPC vendors that deal in local economies to slow mudflation.
Example:
I want to buy toothpicks. They sell for 1 cp ea. today. Someone buys them all up and puts them back on the market at 4 cp ea. Someone else buys them and does the same and now they are 6 cp ea. Mudflation. The program driven NPC corrects the market in that given area by offering them at 2 cp ea. driving the price back to within an uninflated range.
It is not clear what you want to say .
If an NPC sells toothpicks for 1 CP then there is no way to "buy them all" because NPC merchants have generally unlimited supply of items that they sell .
Makes also sense - NPC merchants are money sinks so it is in their interest to always sell something if this something is in demand by players .
So if you sell items at a higher price than an NPC merchant then nobody buys them and goes to the NPC instead . Nobody can compete with NPC merchants . Simple as that .
I really like the idea of multiple currencies. However, it is more complicated than it looks, imo. If you have two currencies, why stop at two? Why not three, or four, or one for each intelligent race? Having multiple currencies would add to the immersion and complexity of the game. And would have a side effect of possibly giving you another economic control, although my initial reaction is that it would complicate the problem for anyone trying to manage the economy. For me, the biggest issue with using two currencies is that it would look very artificial unless there were many currencies. Why would there be just two? In fact, the existence of a second currency begs the question and makes everyone think about why there aren't more. In a way, it would damage immersion in the same way Good vs Evil in EQ2 was so contrived. Why don't the Dwarves have their own currency as well?
However, if you were to have five, or seven, or fifteen curencies the economy would become quite interesting. And Terminus would be a very interesting place.
tl;dr I do advocate for having multiple currencies. However, if there are to be more than one, I think there should be many.
I can see how having multiple currencies could/would be a money sink, which i like. However, if you're kos in your zone, how would you go about getting that locales currency? That'd be a pain just to trade. Would players be able to accept any currency for player to player trades? As far as immersion...precious metals are an accepted currency everywhere. Copper silver gold plat. Call it a day. K.I.S.S.
Ashvaild said:I can see how having multiple currencies could/would be a money sink, which i like. However, if you're kos in your zone, how would you go about getting that locales currency? That'd be a pain just to trade. Would players be able to accept any currency for player to player trades? As far as immersion...precious metals are an accepted currency everywhere. Copper silver gold plat. Call it a day. K.I.S.S.
The answer for that, Ashvaild, is the black market. Every city should have some 'darker' areas where, for the right price, business can be done.
NPC merchants can play the biggest role in keeping the economy in check. Having not having global pricing and allowing prices to fluctuate based upon supply and demand will help tremendously.
It was mentioned earlier that only having intelligent creatures drop coins is a smart move, but thinking more about it, why should creatures like Orcs, Drolvargs or Goblins use the same currencies as us? Let them drop their own currency, currency that can either be exchanged, for a cost, or melted down into ingots you can sell or use in crafting.
Consumables and reagents too are useful. Money simply going from one player to another is not a money sink.
From the practical point of view, multiple currency would be a bother, a negligible money sink and an annoying hurdle to player driven market .
What is the safest way to avoid exchange rate losses in RL ? Never change currencies !
Players would understand this basic insight fast and, if they had to use several currencies, they would simply store sufficient amounts of each currency to never have to change . This only implies to kill mobs and sell items in different areas to earn different currencies and have enough reserves to buy and sell in whatever currency they wish without changing .
The result is that the bank space would be a mess with several currencies and no obviously useful consequence .
As for the player driven market in what currency would the players sell and buy ? It is not reasonable to expect that buyers and sellers would want to bother to hold spreadsheets about all possible currencies and their exchange rates .
It also doesn't make much sense to expect that they would broadcast "WTS Necklace of Doom 100 PP . Or 325 dwarven Khors . Or 16 Ogre sticks . Or 270 Elven pounds . Or .... "
So as there will probably be a player driven EC tunnel like market, the players would all start using the same currency (if only to be able to compare prices) and the other currencies would fade into irrelevance .
This is what spontaneously happens in RL too - there is only one dominating currency which is used in international trade .
So finally multiple currencies would be just a waste of developpers' time, a useless complexity and no impact on monetary inflation at all .
The only advantage I see is for immersion and role playing purposes but am not convinced that it is worth the work and added complexity .
Deadshade said:Klumpedge said:I don't know, maybe I'm way off here, but what about program driven NPC vendors that deal in local economies to slow mudflation.
Example:
I want to buy toothpicks. They sell for 1 cp ea. today. Someone buys them all up and puts them back on the market at 4 cp ea. Someone else buys them and does the same and now they are 6 cp ea. Mudflation. The program driven NPC corrects the market in that given area by offering them at 2 cp ea. driving the price back to within an uninflated range.
Heya Deadshade,
I am talking about a program that monitors the marketplace and sells the same items through an NPC merchant; controlling the market prices. Sorry I did not make that clear from the beginning.
It is not clear what you want to say .
If an NPC sells toothpicks for 1 CP then there is no way to "buy them all" because NPC merchants have generally unlimited supply of items that they sell .
Makes also sense - NPC merchants are money sinks so it is in their interest to always sell something if this something is in demand by players .
So if you sell items at a higher price than an NPC merchant then nobody buys them and goes to the NPC instead . Nobody can compete with NPC merchants . Simple as that .
@Klumpedge
I see now .
But why would you want to "regulate" the marketplace between players ? Every exchange between players is exactly a zero sum game which doesn't change at all the total currency amount so contributes exactly 0 to inflation .
If I buy all 100 toothpick (from players !) for 1 CP and sell them later to other players for 100 CP than the inflation is still 0 . The only thing that happened is that I am 9900 CP richer and the buyers are 9900 CP poorer . But the total amount of cash in the system changed by 9900 - 9900 = 0 .
But if you buy all 100 toothpicks at 1 cp and sell them all at 6 cp you gain a pile of coin. The value of the toothpicks rises, but the value of the money falls.
Why: Because 200 crafters discover they can make a bunch o coin selling toothpicks. They craft a bunch and sell em all at inflated prices further devaluing the money.
1 cp used to buy 1 toothpick, now it only buys 1/6 of a toothpick. The value of the toothpick skyrockets but the value of the currency plummets.
A program driven to monitor and regulate such activity, without stiffling the market entirely, slows the rate of devaluing the money.
I guess that is my idea anyway. Not sure if it works, but I have seen similar devices being used in some game markets.