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What sandbox features would be needed for a prosperous ingame crafting economy?
YoungCaesar
Member UncommonPosts: 326
The recent themepark trend has made efforts to kill any type of economy with divided loot, soul bound items, etc. You can get all the items you need for your character soloing... and while this may be convienent it kills any sort of economy that could emerge in the game...
So what features would you say are needed for an ingame economy to arise? My list would be something like:
Full loot pvp : If you never lose your items, theres never a need to replace them, and crafters would never be needed.
Item decay: Helps with continuing the gear cycle and constant need for new gear...
Regional Resources : There should be resources to fight over all over the map, and this should vary in each region. This will create demand for resources in regions where they are scarce.
Local Banks: What would be the point of regional resources if you can acess the same bank from each city? For a good economy, banks should NOT be linked together.
No Fast Travel: If you could teleport to every city in the map, there wouldnt be high demand for items which are not available in your area... This would destroy any type of economy.
I think these would be needed if there would be a game where you could play as a merchant and sell your wares in different cities for profit...
Comments
YoungCaesar, I'd say you've covered the best and most important aspects.
I can only add these to your list:
Regional Pricing: Each region should have a different price; just like in the real world. The price differential would be related to various factors. Most notably: availability, cost / difficulty of acquisition, local demand and supply.
Labour Market: (Obviously) The ability to find work and hire workers - and thus empire-build.
Cashing-Out: Similar to Second Life, an ability to turn your in-world money into real-world currency. I'm telling you, this feature alone impact would massively on the liveliness of an economy here.
Those are mine.
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See...EVE Online and Star Wars Galaxies ....merge those mechanics together with some refinements and you got a winner
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Random server selection. One char per server.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
That is a little dramatic and completely false based on other games with looting. Eve, oldschool uo, heck even darkfall have/had lots of crafters. IMO item degradation is more important since it removes items from the game. However looting can only help too since it cycles need more quickly. You don't have to like it though.
Id like to see a world where there is a fixed amount of currency and resources filter into the world at a controlled pace through rarity. So influx is slowed and items wear and break. Something like this May help to keep the economy from breaking as fast.
Hehe full loot is what makes the economy possible... without it, people wouldnt be in constant need of new items, and thats what sparks trading between players and makes crafters high in demand... Also, the risk of transporting items/resources would help regulate the prices, and it would make playstyles like the highway bandit viable...
There isn't a prosperous crafting game that works, while at the same time making it a secondary system to combat and leveling and pve.
It almost seems the crafters and pvpers are playing one game and everyone else is playing another.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Skill Cap
Simply put, one player should not be able to do everything. A limited amount of total skill points guarantees a degree of specialization, ensuring that not everyone does the same thing. With that, different players are needed for different tasks, which is vital to stimulate a game's economy. A game where not everyone is a crafter ensures that the one's which pursue such career paths are not omnipresent and are, therefore, much more valuable.
Depletable and Limited Resources
Another crucial factor to a healthy in-game economy consists of having resource nodes eventually deplete indefinitely. This makes it so prices dynamically shift considering a resource's current availability. Furthermore, resources that are limited based on, for instance, the current season of a game world's year adjusts supply and demand and makes it so prices are in constant fluctuation. Certain types of wood from trees in the real world are, today, extremely valuable because they are few in numbers. The same principle would apply.
Crafting and Harvesting as Important as Adventuring
A game must allow players to fully develop and progress their characters using crafting and harvesting alone. This ties into skill caps, where players could decide to focus their character solely on these aspects of the game while completely neglecting adventuring, but still be successful.
Complex Crafting and Gathering Systems
Providing crafters with options that allows for the manufacturing of truly unique gear makes it so that individual crafters may stand out for their skill and expertise in their field of work. By tying in player skill, resource quality, and item customizability to the game's production system, it becomes far more complex, bolstering competition within the game's economy based on the quality and the features of the merchandise. The most skilled harvesters, for example, would be sought after for their ability to locate and mine the most precious and greatest quality ores.
Characters Can Use Any Type of Weapon and Gear
This feature is also important for an in-game economy, because if, for instance, rogues are the only leather-wearing class in the game yet rogues are an unpopular class, it immediately cripples the line of work for leatherworkers, since they only had one potential customer type. Make is so that anyone can wear anything, making for less useless items within the game's economy.
Region-Specific Gear
This features is important because it creates a need for different types of gear depending on, for instance, the climate. Consider a desert continent, where the oppressive heat makes it unbearable to wear certain types of armor. That immediately creates a local demand for certain types of gear which accommodate the needs of the players that reside within that area. This is significant because it diversifies the economy and leads to truly unique schools of crafting that develop their trade based on their region.
Stealing and Illegal Trading
These features add an entire new layer of depth to a game's economy. Stealing can lead to, for instance, a rich player paying a salary to guards so that they can watch and protect his estate. It can also lead to players having to replace gear because it was stolen. Illegal trade makes it so stolen, banned, or illegal items have a way of circulating through the player-base.
Renting and Taxing
Allowing players to determine how much tax others pay if building or working within their settlements is a great way to keep an economy active and running. Renting of property is another feature which generates player interaction and interdependency.
Public/Private Companies and Shares
Further adds new dynamics to the economy and creates opportunities for investment, playing the market, market manipulation, company restructuring, etc.
I could probably think of more, but I feel like going to bed now lol.
So far its been mentioned 4 times
EvE - The balance in this game between the industrialists and the Fighters is managed by the economy, When prices are good for crafters, you will get people move from combat > craft , and when prices crash because of influx it goes the other way.
Whilst not many players choose to do both, there is a select few (by few i mean 1000s) who can switch between building and killing (either NPC or Players)
The market economy in EvE is second to NONE - It is fully player managed, for me what makes it so is that its region based, and also the buy order section.
Having the buy orders allows players to dictate what the minimum price fro each item is, and generally this is in the 5% +/- of the material cost at its VERY highest. (please note this is a generalisation on t1 products and ships)
Their PvP allows for this, because of the game mechanics, what you wont get in other games that are not spaceships, is the vehicle / body getting killed and a new one required.
Their mechanics on the loot is each stack has a 50% chance of dropping, it is full loot (inc cargo) but every item / every stack has the same 50% so if you consider the average ship has 10 mods, every one killed requires 1 new ship + 5 new modules. The PvE side of the game caters very little for the normal players type of modules, You can get VERY High End modules and very low end modules, but the standard T2 modules can only be made.
For any MMO to work as well as EvE will be hard to make, Fantasy would have to be full loot and degradation, Raiding would offer very little in terms of best in game.
The seperation between gathering and crafting has to be made, Allowing everyone to gather mats, and then craft 2 types of items, such as being a clothy and Weopansmith, but you can collect all the mats yourself. This does not make for a good economy.
Refer the previous point to EvE the largest volume of anything traded is minerals, they are the raw material for EVERYTHING, and as with EvE you cannot at lower level do more than 1 thing well, You can be general miner / builder or builder / combat or Miner/Combat but you cannot do either well until you get to the higher SP
I cannot comment on other games, I haven't seen another game do craft (of ones ive played) anything like as good as EvE but for me if its important then EvE has to be the model to consider.
This post is all my opinion, but I welcome debate on anything i have put, however, personal slander / name calling belongs in game
where of course you're welcome to call me names im often found lounging about in EvE online.
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Full loot PVP mean item go from someone's hand to another , it don't consume which no good for "crafting economy"
Item decay (consume) do .
And when you bring up transporting , it have to go with weight + inventory space manage .
Without said that we need better crafting system where the produce not copy/paste of other.
I think you have pretty well touched on all of the points that I find important in crafting. I would only add being able to have player controlled NPC shop keepers to sell your wares and the ability to set faction restrictions on sales; ie: the right to refuse service to certain races/factions/guilds.
Item decay only won't work. You need either full loot or items get destroyed on death. And open PVP in some fashion.
PVE and item decay will work until you add pve players in the mix.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
To do that, a developer would have to come up with a feasible and palatable solution for hoarding that doesn't include taking things away that a player invested time or resources to obtain.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Item decay over time either in durability or quality I guess falls under taking things away even if you agree to it. Works the same way as levels almost.
I guess you could make storage less unbelievable.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
This is like watching a train wreck...
How about, instead, you design the game so that it is easy for each player to craft one of any item, but expensive to craft any additional ones? Discourage players from mass-producing unwanted items instead of forcing them into it with a crafting XP system (yuck).
Well shit while your at it, design it to be fun and fair for everyone who pays too.
Discourage players from mass slaughter of wildlife and slave labor forcing them into it with "one type of xp for all" to remove the artificial weaknesses.
Why not have everyone just craft for themselves it's so easy but too expensive to break even crafting for others.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Crafters themselves need to be rare, while at the same time, the items they create need to be better than anything else.
You can't have everyone able to level whatever craft or crafts they want and expect it to mean anything.
I disagree pretty much completely:
Full loot devalues items. In games where any old zerger can loot your stuff, the stuff will just be mediocre easily replaceable at best. This completely removes all incentive for progressive item play and crafters may be financially rewarded but they are just making the same old cheapo crap over and over. They are not master craftsman and the psychology and romance of being a crafter is destroyed.
The same principle applies to decay. You might think that being able to remake crappy shit for people is great but you seem to miss that item centric games revolve around uber loot or the fantasy and romance around the idea of being able to get uber loot. A crafter likes to think that they are a good crafter or working towards being a good crafter, ie progression and not living at ground zero perpetually because everyone is dragged back to it every time they die.
Want to make crafting rewarding? Here's how:
Crafters are competing with cash shops and loot drops. Tip the balance slightly without the histrionics of your other suggestions.
If UO, AC and EVE Online didn't exist, I would agree. Unfortunately they do, which blows your opinion-stated-as-fact out the window.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
UO changed. And UO changed because the devs saw all sorts of issues with those parts of the game. Can't comment knowledgeably on AC, and EVE is a kind of an outlier being future SF and an otherwise different kettle of fish.
The problem with full loot PVP's effect on the economy is its effect on the developers' economy of staying appropriately profitable.
I definitely prefer a decay-through-use mechanic, with quality levels. Though not the 'used in two fights, now worthless' time frame. The better the quality of the item, the better the repairing craftsman has to be to fix it to its maximum. Also a skills system where everyone can't do everything. It allows the game to be seeded with some very cool items -- that are not useable without a trek to the very best PC crafters of its kind. PC crafters should also be able to make things that are significantly better than the usually available equipment.
Whatever mechanism you use though, you do have to make sure that the rest of the game world, game logic, and game story support it.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Ahnog
Hokey religions are no replacement for a good blaster at your side.
I have to disagree a bit. Well, not about the Full Loot thing though.
Unless you are dropped into a new world tabula rasa, you are in a place where people have probably been making armor, weapons, etc, for hundreds and hundreds of years. Why shouldn't a bandit have the chance of dropping the sword he just used to try and rob you with? It'd just be a mediocre blacksmith made standard sword. Just dropping raw materials is almost as immersion breaking as that rat that dropped a quarterstaff as loot. Tie the drops to what you are fighting.
Item decay is reasonable, but certainly not at the rates I have seen in some attempts at such a system. Perhaps on going decay, but paired with a really small chance of breakage started by and perhaps increasing with decay status?
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.