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| 1/22/2008 3:08:44 PM |
| Eiji |
| 1/9/2008 4:22:49 PM |
| Eiji |
| 1/9/2008 4:22:27 PM |
| Eiji |
| 1/2/2008 10:39:14 PM |
| DaveB |
| 9/25/2007 12:08:54 PM |
| Eiji |
|
List all versions |
ok, I think that for now, we may as well have a list for ideas on how to drive the game's economy.. for now I wont put anything down, but we can add ideas as we get them and mull them over at a later time...
(Eiji)
Just thought of something.. I recall playing Armored Core years ago with ID... at one point I found myself in the red..
which got me thinking... could that be a good point to include some "loan sharking" for the darker grey and black factions?
(Eiji)
In offline games, money is often used as a form of "score" to identify how well you are doing in the game. Allowing it to go negative is perfectly feasible, in an offline game, because of that. Going negative means that you are doing badly at the game. Mechwarrior 1, 2, 3 and 4 also allowed you to go negative in campaign mode.
In online games, money is often used as a mechanism for trading work you do obtaining an item for work someone else has done obtaining items. The money is more of a system for trading items without actually trading the items. I sell item A to person A for 10,000 credits. I then use 10,000 credits to buy item B from person B.
The credits "shouldn't" be a score, where the job is to accumulate them. Allowing them to go negative is, then, much more problematic. You are trading future work (that might or might not ever happen) for already accomplished work, and that is dangerous.
I am not saying we cannot implement some form of loan/credit system in the game, I am not saying that at all. I am saying we have to be aware that it could be abused, and plan for it.
For example, we could limit borrowed money to repairs and to generic, vendor-bought ammunition. In such a scenario, we could require all future work to go against the borrowed money first (100%), and not give the player any money until they are positive. To prevent abuse, the items repaired or vendor-bought could be marked no-trade.
However, that still doesn't solve the problem.
Lets say I go out, and I come back with "Godly Laser Cannon of Greater World Slaying." I trade this item to an alt, possibly on a separate account, and sell it. I use the alt to buy and transfer items back to the main. The main still is (potentially massively) in debt, but is obtaining items still. And its something very difficult to prove and act on.
I don't know how you could do this safely; that does not mean there is not a way to do it safely, it just means that I don't see it.
(Dave)
The best way to manage the economy is probably to have items that people actually want.
The assumption being made is that money = economy. This is not the actual case.
The "universe" of the economy consists of masses (items) that are clustered together (at players). Energy (money) is directed at the masses to move them from player to player. Energy that is not acting on an item is stored/potential energy, waiting to be directed at some future time.
Ideally, the masses are what is important, not the energy.
The issue with the energy is that a handful of players who play more often will inherently have more of it, just as they will inherently have more "mass" as well -- they'll have all the objects they collect by playing more often.
If you look at PSO (and this is how I believe TR will end up as well), the economy isn't based on Maeseta. Maeseta rae almost totally useless past level 60. You collect thousands of them, you spend almost none of them if you're playing well, and so nobody wants to trade them for anything. People hand off tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, without even thinking about it -- because the Maeseta is worthless.
What has value are the rares. Especially the rares obtained from challenge mode.
A better solution than "money" per se might be to do what World of Darkness and Hero does, which is to have a "resource" pool based on your faction. As long as you are polite, and keep doing missions for a faction, you can get anything you need from them. The better your reputation with the faction, the better stuff they give you for free. But if you push it and take too much nice stuff in too short of a time, then you lose reputation with them, and they stop offering as nice of stuff.
Someone who has spent two years doing system faction missions would be able to get about anything they would ever need from the faction they were helping. They'd probably have high negative factions with the opposing factions, from doing a never ending stream of missions, but they'd always have everything they need (repairs, etc.) from their allys.
A casual player could get the same faction, and have access to the same items, under the same restrictions.
Then you have a barter system for items, resources, etc. and you allow that to form the basis of the actual player economy. The players don't have to worry "can I get ammunition" or "can I afford to repair," because their faction takes care of the basics (and they just have to retain a positive faction). The player might trade for better, PC-crafted ammunition, etc. if they want to.
EQ1 has a barter system these days, as well as the vendor system. Basically, you say "I want to trade xyz item." Other players make an offer "I am offering these items in trade." When you log on, you click "accept" or "decline" on the barter.
If you used the general resource system for common supplies (so that money isn't a real thing), you might also be able to do gambling, etc. at that point. Each player could put an item in the pool, winner gets the items (or w/e) -- that might be a fair way to do the gambling, because you could always just trade the items, so there's no advantage to cheating (except whichever character you're not controlling probably dies, and so you lose that item and have to ask the faction for repairs).
Again, I'm not saying "lets go forward with this set of ideas," either. I'm just putting them down as one way of doing it that might work. What I really like about this idea is money ceases to be a score, and faction becomes much more important.
(Dave)
* also on this idea, individual groups within a faction could have their own "micro factions." For example, there might be a "purist" micro-faction and there might be a "hacks" micro-faction, both within a single branch of a system faction, etc. To obtain certain items, you might have to have a certain level of lifetime faction with the micro-faction... This makes it so that power players either need to make alternates or trade, in order to have the necessary factions to get the challenges for specific rare items.
ok.. lets see..
I think one major idea here would be that most of the "stuff" that players pick up in the field should be mostly used for something... I have noticed this to a degree in Tabula Rasa (the drugs and scrap metal for example... drugs are ammo for bio-speciallist, and the scrap is for the soldier's "shrapnel" logos attack).
this might be more workable.. you (Dave) mentioned that all spells and skills should use up power and a reagent of some kind...lets take this up a notch...
for example, in the case of summoning a "pet"..the spell might require more than one reagent... lets say for a brawler pet, you need so much of "ceramic alloy" for the pet's armor, a "computer core" for its "brain" (which will allow it to be controlled), so much "dutainium" for its internal structure, and a couple units of a fuel source for its powerplant... in short, the pet is like a normal battlesuit, save for the fact it has no pilot... kind of like a Cybrid from StarSiege...
so.. to make a long story short.. it would be like this... a "gunner" keeps picking up armor materials in the field..he can trade these for repairs or things he needs like ammo. another thing he could do is trade it for ammo from a summoner-class hacker who needs the armor reagent for his pets.
you follow me here?
(Eiji)
OK, so here's the million dollar question so to speak.
First, we have a couple different kinds of players. Lets start by talking about the types of players:
1. Fred Powergamer -- logs on 20 hours a day, sleeps 4, drinks a case of coke or dew a day and is permanently attached to his chair.
2. Joe Casual -- logs on for a couple hours every day or two. Has a job, has to eat, sleep, wash, etc.
3. Alfredo Lazy -- logs in once a week or two, for a couple hours.
4. Xia Farm -- logs in 24 hours a day to spam and annoy players
5. Romano Deeppockets -- plays a little, but mostly buys stuff from 4, thus becoming the 1:100 or 1:1000 that Xia needs to maintain a profitable business.
Player 1 goes out and kills stuff a lot. As a result, if loot items are a random drop chance (usually the case), they have more random throws, and therefore overall they will have better items. They get a lot of nice items, they don't need, which enter the economy.
Player 2 goes out and kills stuff also. He'll have more stuff than 3, if items are random, due to more play time, but he won't have the items that player 1 does.
Player 3 goes out and kills stuff as well, but doesn't have the nice stuff nor the ability to buy the nice stuff from a PC Auction house, etc. because the meager amount of money that Player 3 earns isn't enough to buy Player 1 any item that they actually want.
Player 4 goes out and kills stuff like Player 1. Player 4, however, is running 12 characters simultaneously and can't devote any attention to any of them. This results in a cubic buttload of the same items that player 2 and 3 routinely obtain. This results in prices going down on the items player 2 and 3 are most likely to have, which in turn leaves them permanently broke.
Player 5, in turn, feeds the demand for Player 4 to continue to destroy the game. Player 5 has the demand to collect vast amounts of cred, because Player 1 sells the rare items high -- so that Player 1 can turn around and buy the items that they need.
...
If you look at D&D, the average MMOG -- and MUD -- is essentially a "Monty Haul" campaign. The difficulty level isn't high, and is no higher to obtain the rarest item than to obtain the most common item, its just a matter of for how long you repeat the process before you get bored and do something else for a while. Often, XP "grind" groups essentially stand still and "pull" mobs, and desirable "named" mobs get camped 24x7.
...
If you look at a traditional, well run D&D game, the players aren't running around with millions of gold pieces and magic equipment in every slot. It just flat out doesn't happen. In many games, money is tracked sa a vague "resources" skill -- a higher level of the "resources" skill gives you access to more money.
Now there are some points here...
Lets say I charge 5cr per unit of ammo, and give the player money for killing mobs. If those numbers are completely balanced, then the player cannot gain money. They're paying as much for ammo as the mob is giving them, so there's no point.
Player 1 (in my above example) is killing many, many more monsters compared to 2, 3 or 5. As a result, if its balanced so there is a fair reward per monster, then Player 1 ends up with enough money to buy and sell players 2 and 3 multiple times.
Player 3 (in my above example) is screwed. Items and abilities they want to buy from the auction house are incredibly expensive.
Player 4's job is nice and easy -- they just sell off every item they get -- either to the NPCs or to the Auction House -- and collect money. Selling to player 5 is easy, setting up web pages to sell to player 5 is easy, obtaining vast amounts of money is easy. All they need are a couple good characters and some time.
Player 5's job is also nice and easy -- they pay some money, they log in, and there's the money waiting for them. They cash in, and then they take that cash and feed it into the economy.
Player 4 and 5, remember, poison the economy. Player 1, to a lesser extent, also poisons the economy.
...
Now player 1 just looted "Great Electric Sword of Extreme Uberness." He has one already, so he decides to trade this one to another player.
In a typical MMOG, he goes to the auction house and pays some listing fee. The item then is listed on the broker for some period of time, and either someone buys it or not. If someone does buy it, money changes hands. Player 1 then either hordes the money (to poison the economy later on) or spends it immediately (poisoning the economy immediately).
What I'm proposing is instead of it being an auction, Player 1 instead puts the item on a trade system. The item shows up in the list as "Great Electric Sword of Extreme Uberness." Other players take items, and offer them in trade. When the player goes back to the trade system, they see all the proposed trades.
The issue here is it is much harder for Player 4 to set up shop. They can't log in and say 1mcr for $2, because there's nothing that works that way. They have to manage inventories, they have to list specific items, you've destoyed player 4's ability to poison the game.
That, in turn, destroys Player 5's ability to play the game -- they can't go to some farmer and buy the stuff they need. When you combine it with a skill system, assuming all the skills are good and powerful in their own way, there's not really a way for them to power level either.
If you include power leveling potions, etc., in an item store, then this farther damages player 4 and player 5. All the sudden, paying that farmer doesn't look so important. Remembering player 4 and 5 are the game killers. We don't want them playing our game.
Now, if you do challenge based rewards, Player 2 and 3 no longer have to rely on random chance to get the items they want and need. Challenge based rewards are based on the principal that instead of it being a random chance that an item will drop, instead its based on how well you do on a challenge. This encourages playing and playing well, and it gets the best items to the best players -- not necessarily just the players with the most spare time.
Meanwhile Player 1 certainly has time to work at and master challenges, to get the items that they want as well. So you've hopefully not alienated the power players.
...
The point here though is the players that are good members of the community, those are the players who you want to play the game. They do not benefit from a money system in any way, and would benefit more from a well written trade system.
...
Trash items are stupid -- they take up database space, they annoy players (when players run out of space), and why is that NPC buying all those rat tails anyway? I mean its stupid to have all these item drops of useless garbage. Oh joy, look its a piece of crappy armor with no stats on it that serves no usefull purpose. The players are going to be all over that crappy, useless item. The other problem is in general, if you hvae multiple degrees of garabge, pure luck determines who gets money and who doesn't. Again, I don't think that is very fair to the players.
Lets take up millions of bytes of extra space, and memory, to store items that are just garbage.
...
Ammunition:
My vision here at the moment would be for basic ammunition to be plentiful and free. The whole point in charging for basic ammunition is to remove money from the economy. Money feeds 4 and 5, while adding nothing to 1,2 and 3 and also adding nothing to gameplay. Maybe gaining faction would allow you to redeam a small amount of more advanced ammunition once in a while -- maybe.
More advanced ammunition would take facilities to produce. A PA could control such facilities, and there could also be public ones available (probably at a lesser yield rate). The PA, of course, would be responsible for holding the facility against attacks.
How do you trade this? Again -- what I am thinking would probably work would be to copy the Resources stat from Storyteller for example. Giving advacned ammunitition to a faction boosts your standing with the faction. What the faction offers you is based on your standing. Over time, your standing drops off. Things like providing ammunition provide small faction hits, so you have to do it on a recurring basis to keep your faction high. Things like doing missions will boost faction(s) with one organization and drop it for others.
It makes life harder on mercenaries and bounty hunters, as doing mission for one faction tends to lower others. On the other hand, if they limit their work to one or two factions, then they should be able to work pretty high on those factions, and gain access to the best ammunition.
Of course, if a faction has nobody producing for it, then it will desprately need ammunition, etc. and providing those needed supplies would yield more faction in less time. It might be posting missions for such things, etc.
Anyway, thats the more detailed explanation.
