Just as an idea, but perhaps the answer is in bringing an economist who understands MMOs into the fold from development on through to Live and expansions and beyond.
Game economies are just as alive, and moreso, than the bosses players fight. Perhaps more companies should devote employees solely to their care.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
After reading your post it felt like started reading in the middle of the book.
He replied a few times in a thread I made and touched on inflation. It was probably the influence for this thread.
I had actually been planning on making this thread for a while, but hadn't gotten around to doing so. It usually takes me at least a few days of mulling through an essay in my head before it comes out any good.
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One of the weird things about economics is that you either get it or you don't. Either you naturally think the right way to understand economics, or else you don't. If you do, then concepts like supply and demand seem intuitively obvious, and having university level courses to teach them seems about as silly as having university level courses teach healthy people how to walk or breathe. (Higher level economics courses get a lot harder, of course.)
And if you don't naturally get economics, then you can work and work and work to try to understand it, and it's never going to make all that much sense. And that's the sort of person who needs to worry a lot about getting scammed via e-mails, web sites, etc., because he won't notice that people trying to scam him are making claims that are obviously impossible.
It's also the sort of person who starts threads making claims about a game economy that are obviously impossible, even to someone who knows nothing about the game. I'm not pointing to any particular thread with that claim, and especially not the one that Deathofsage linked. Rather, I'm talking about threads like I saw on the Puzzle Pirates forums where people would say things to the effect of, "I'm trying to buy this good at this price, but no one will sell to me because everyone else pays twice as much. And I'm even trying to sell my finished goods at a much lower price than everyone else, but you stupid people won't let me because I can't get the materials. Therefore, the game economy is broken."
Another big problem with MMO economics is that players really doesn´t consume much stuff. You can pour all the cash you earned into buying some loot from the broker because otherwise you only need a little for some moneysinks.
Most regular people can´t save much money, because we need stuff. Food, alcohol, clothes, hardware (TV, computer), entertainment like games and movies and so on.
I wonder if MMOs shouldn't take an idea from "Eye of the beholder" and more or less force the players to eat.
One of the weird things about economics is that you either get it or you don't. Either you naturally think the right way to understand economics, or else you don't. If you do, then concepts like supply and demand seem intuitively obvious, and having university level courses to teach them seems about as silly as having university level courses teach healthy people how to walk or breathe. (Higher level economics courses get a lot harder, of course.)
And if you don't naturally get economics, then you can work and work and work to try to understand it, and it's never going to make all that much sense. And that's the sort of person who needs to worry a lot about getting scammed via e-mails, web sites, etc., because he won't notice that people trying to scam him are making claims that are obviously impossible.
It's also the sort of person who starts threads making claims about a game economy that are obviously impossible, even to someone who knows nothing about the game. I'm not pointing to any particular thread with that claim, and especially not the one that Deathofsage linked. Rather, I'm talking about threads like I saw on the Puzzle Pirates forums where people would say things to the effect of, "I'm trying to buy this good at this price, but no one will sell to me because everyone else pays twice as much. And I'm even trying to sell my finished goods at a much lower price than everyone else, but you stupid people won't let me because I can't get the materials. Therefore, the game economy is broken."
Alright, I stand corrected.
As to your point about economics, that pretty much stands for math in general.
But yeah, it's like the things on facebook my friends share. A friend today shared a picture of poor child who'd apparently been horribly disfigured in a fire with the caption that Facebook will give $3 towards this child's care for each person who shares the link.
I'm sure you've been around long enough to remember the FW:FW:FW:FW: MICROSOFT WILL GIVE YOU $500 emails that went something to the effect of..
[MICROSOFT/AOL/YAHOO/SOMEONE] is studing how emails rotate around the world and has asked that you forward this to all of your friends. This email has a special sort of tracking attached to it so they'll know when you send it and if you send it to more than [X] people, they'll send you a check for $500 / a free computer / a free copy of [xyz software] etc.
And the people who forwarded it understood nothing about the sheer stupid amount of money that would build up (especially at $500/pop lol) nor anything about the internet really.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
After reading your post it felt like started reading in the middle of the book.
Ha, I like it. He can start a series of posts each evening educating the masses on basic economic principles and MMOs. Maybe have some celebrity writers on occassion, bring in an economist, etc. Better than another thread that says: "GW2 rules. No it sucks. No it rules. Ok then, SWTOR sucks. Nuh uh. Yup. Etc"
Yeah I have found Quiz to be another of the "good" sandbox posters in my book. Quiz, Kyleran, and Loke666 are great posters IMO.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
You also have to be careful about making players spend too much money or they will never have any. Some players in games like WoW for instance are always poor, but then there are players with 1mil plus gold.
That's nothing more than user error. Some people seem to be completely incapable of saving money. As soon as they get some money, they'll spend it. Or perhaps rather, they constantly see something they want to buy and can't afford, so they farm like crazy to save up until they can buy it, and go right back to having no money. At which point, they immediately move on to another item that they want but can't afford.
Such people will always be broke, no matter how much money they get. Doubling the rate at which they get gold only means that they either go through the cycle of buying something twice as fast, or pick items that cost twice as much, or something to that effect. Give them gold ten times as fast, even nothing else was changed for anything else in the game (so that gold isn't merely worth 1/10 as much as before), and they'll still forever be broke.
It's like that in real-life, too. People see things they want but can't afford and buy them, and then carry credit card balances in the thousands of dollars for years at a time. They max out their borrowing capacity from traditional sources, and then rely on more dubious sources like payday loans. Doubling their income won't get them out of debt; it will only mean that they immediately start spending twice as much.
That's why lottery winners are likely to be broke only a few short years after they win the lottery. The lottery is mostly a self-selecting pool of people who can't manage money; that's why they're playing the lottery in the first place. Pick someone who can't manage money and give him a lot of it, and he'll predictably waste it all pretty quickly. They get more income than they reasonably expected to earn in a lifetime, then spend it all within a few years.
What to do about people like that is a tricky question (in real-life politics; if you're in the US, think Social Security). I kind of hope that someday when they're playing an MMORPG where they're constantly broke and other people seem rich, it will click that they're doing something wrong. If so, that could easily be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a lifetime. If it worked, then a year of playing an MMORPG could be more valuable than a college degree. But I'm not optimistic that it will work, or at least, not for very many people.
But whatever you think is the best idea, I'm pretty sure that giving them more because they've already spent all they had (as the poster I quoted proposes) isn't it. That's just subsidizing stupidity.
* Not at all saying wow's repair system is punshing.
Broke players in Warcraft tend to be people who die a lot, whether it's soloing and not reading quest text and realizing that you're not supposed to just go find the mob and attack it (UNLESS YOU'RE A PALADIN) or whether because their casual raiding guild wipes a lot.
When you die a lot, especially with the repair normalization that came with Cata, you burn through a lot of gold, no matter what class you're on. Of course, progression guilds (whether friendly or hardcore) usually offered players a daily amount for repair expenses and some even allowed the players to roll greed for boe drops or sold boe drops and split the gold amongst the players.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug. 12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
You also have to be careful about making players spend too much money or they will never have any. Some players in games like WoW for instance are always poor, but then there are players with 1mil plus gold.
That's nothing more than user error. Some people seem to be completely incapable of saving money. As soon as they get some money, they'll spend it. Or perhaps rather, they constantly see something they want to buy and can't afford, so they farm like crazy to save up until they can buy it, and go right back to having no money. At which point, they immediately move on to another item that they want but can't afford.
Such people will always be broke, no matter how much money they get. Doubling the rate at which they get gold only means that they either go through the cycle of buying something twice as fast, or pick items that cost twice as much, or something to that effect. Give them gold ten times as fast, even nothing else was changed for anything else in the game (so that gold isn't merely worth 1/10 as much as before), and they'll still forever be broke.
It's like that in real-life, too. People see things they want but can't afford and buy them, and then carry credit card balances in the thousands of dollars for years at a time. They max out their borrowing capacity from traditional sources, and then rely on more dubious sources like payday loans. Doubling their income won't get them out of debt; it will only mean that they immediately start spending twice as much.
That's why lottery winners are likely to be broke only a few short years after they win the lottery. The lottery is mostly a self-selecting pool of people who can't manage money; that's why they're playing the lottery in the first place. Pick someone who can't manage money and give him a lot of it, and he'll predictably waste it all pretty quickly. They get more income than they reasonably expected to earn in a lifetime, then spend it all within a few years.
What to do about people like that is a tricky question (in real-life politics; if you're in the US, think Social Security). I kind of hope that someday when they're playing an MMORPG where they're constantly broke and other people seem rich, it will click that they're doing something wrong. If so, that could easily be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a lifetime. If it worked, then a year of playing an MMORPG could be more valuable than a college degree. But I'm not optimistic that it will work, or at least, not for very many people.
But whatever you think is the best idea, I'm pretty sure that giving them more because they've already spent all they had (as the poster I quoted proposes) isn't it. That's just subsidizing stupidity.
I wasn't talking about disposable income, but more of required payments, like repairs and such. If those expenses are too high, everyone will be broke except people that spend a lot of time farming.
Most regular people can´t save much money, because we need stuff. Food, alcohol, clothes, hardware (TV, computer), entertainment like games and movies and so on.
People need some stuff. But most Americans don't "need" nearly as much as they think they do. You need food, but you don't need to regularly eat out at expensive restaurants. You don't really need a television, but even if you think you do, you don't need a 42" model. You don't need to pay to go to the movies. You need housing, but you don't need a 1000 ft^2 house.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't have any of that stuff. I am saying that you shouldn't simply spend whatever you feel like spending until forced to stop because you can't borrow any more money.
I wasn't talking about disposable income, but more of required payments, like repairs and such. If those expenses are too high, everyone will be broke except people that spend a lot of time farming.
It's been a long time since I played WoW. But when I played it, selling the non-soulbound raid loot that raids got would almost always pay the repair costs incurred in the raid many times over. And that's even though the bulk of the good loot was soulbound. If you think you can't afford 200g in death penalty expenses to get 1000g worth of loot, you're doing it wrong. And if you're routinely starting a raid and wiping without killing anything, you're also doing it wrong.
op!inflation was invented so the real culprit could be hidden!check eve online it took one of the group what a year to find out the cheating!if they haddent been so dedicated as a group that skeem could have gone on for year!check us in canada!
we have ipc(indice du prix a la consommation(french,sorry dont know what it is called in each country but we all have it!)
they hired mathematian to play with this formula!why bother?the end result is that ipc is lower 1% instead of 4 or 5%imagine it doesnt cost 100$ for exemple to buy food they made an error it was costing only 97 $ ,result no paid raise véi dont even know all the is related to ipc.but people say it would have costed us less to tax us more!ya it is that big of a deal!
basicly it is a giga tax !and next year when people complain they ll say it is the fault of inflation!in the end it is the same for gaming!they go try their skeem in gaming if it works and it is hard to get caught in real life it will be impossible because
people question less in real life !
that is the real reason why inflation really happen in gaming|!
I wasn't talking about disposable income, but more of required payments, like repairs and such. If those expenses are too high, everyone will be broke except people that spend a lot of time farming.
It's been a long time since I played WoW. But when I played it, selling the non-soulbound raid loot that raids got would almost always pay the repair costs incurred in the raid many times over. And that's even though the bulk of the good loot was soulbound. If you think you can't afford 200g in death penalty expenses to get 1000g worth of loot, you're doing it wrong. And if you're routinely starting a raid and wiping without killing anything, you're also doing it wrong.
Depending on raid rules, and rolls, a player might never get any trash loot. Plus not every player raids. I never had any problems with money in wow because I farmed, but my nephew never had any money because he didn't and only went on pug raids. For someone who pugs and has a higher death ratio, than sellable loot gained those repair costs add up very quickly.
Raid guilds aren't always an option either since they want people on at scheduled times, which he couldn't do.
they hired mathematian to play with this formula!why bother?the end result is that ipc is lower 1% instead of 4 or 5%imagine it doesnt cost 100$ for exemple to buy food they made an error it was costing only 97 $ ,result no paid raise véi dont even know all the is related to ipc.but people say it would have costed us less to tax us more!ya it is that big of a deal!
Inflation is actually very tricky to define, and there are some judgment call choices. You can get a $1000 computer today, and you could get a $1000 computer ten years ago. But they're nowhere near equivalent, so to say that computer prices haven't changed is silly. If today's computer offers ten times the performance (to make up an arbitrary number), does that mean that a $1000 computer a decade ago is equivalent to a $100 computer today? Except that you can't get a new $100 computer today.
Technology changes very fast, of course, but you can make the same argument for many other goods. A $30,000 car today is not the same as a $30,000 car ten years ago.
And what about substitute goods? Suppose that Global MegaCorp sold widgets at $100 each ten years ago. Then they saw that they had a monopoly, so they doubled their prices. Some investors saw that it was still profitable to sell widgets at $100 each, so they started Generic KnockOffs to sell widgets at $100 each. Global MegaCorp concludes that they can make more money by relying on a heavy advertising blitz to convince some customers to pay $200 each for their widgets, so they don't slash prices.
So, what happened to the price of widgets in the last decade? Did they double, or did they stay the same? Does your answer change if you think Global MegaCorp's widgets really are a lot better than those of Generic KnockOffs? There's actually good reason to believe that substitute goods will systematically cause governments to overestimate inflation if they're careless.
Those who blame the "too much gold" side of the equation often think of gold farmers who sell in-game gold for real-life money. Or maybe they think players are spending too much time farming, perhaps because the game encourages it. They're simply wrong, and very rarely do either of those claims have any merit. Farming may make the equilibrium price higher than it would otherwise be, but that doesn't cause prices to rise as time passes, which is the definition of inflation.U
(...)
You are wrong. Here is why: farming does not happen instantly, it is a function of time. Equilibrium price is not reached instantly either. Prices may increase as times passes, even if it is for a limited amount of time. Special case when the time is so large that we can model it as if the equilibrium price is never reached.
Inflation is the rate of change in prices as time passes. If farming causes all goods to always cost twice as much as they would otherwise, that doesn't affect inflation at all. In order for farming to cause changes in the rate of inflation, there need to be changes that cause the rate or relative effectiveness (as compared to just playing the game and not worrying about loot) of farming to drastically change. And even if that does happen, it will only be a temporary blip. That has no effect whatsoever on whether you have long-term hyperinflation or not.
Another big problem with MMO economics is that players really doesn´t consume much stuff. You can pour all the cash you earned into buying some loot from the broker because otherwise you only need a little for some moneysinks.
Most regular people can´t save much money, because we need stuff. Food, alcohol, clothes, hardware (TV, computer), entertainment like games and movies and so on.
I wonder if MMOs shouldn't take an idea from "Eye of the beholder" and more or less force the players to eat.
I'm not familiar with the game but a "hunger" debuff would be interesting, it would also potentially boost mini-professions. You could give an "unrested" debuff as well technically and charge players taxes or maintenece fee's for their homes or costs associated with stays at an inn. This kind of thing would make inn's a social focal point as well.
Really, implenting a "cost of living" in some form is the best way and even in a lollipop themeparkish mmo you could make the debuffs very negligible after combining it into one "comfort" meter
Although, in a themepark MMO I'm not sure f there's a point as everything is so controlled and spoonfed that inflation is just perception (as if Blizzard is forced to make the mount impractically priced because they have no hold on inflation lol)
Another big problem with MMO economics is that players really doesn´t consume much stuff. You can pour all the cash you earned into buying some loot from the broker because otherwise you only need a little for some moneysinks.
Most regular people can´t save much money, because we need stuff. Food, alcohol, clothes, hardware (TV, computer), entertainment like games and movies and so on.
I wonder if MMOs shouldn't take an idea from "Eye of the beholder" and more or less force the players to eat.
I'm not familiar with the game but a "hunger" debuff would be interesting, it would also potentially boost mini-professions. You could give an "unrested" debuff as well technically and charge players taxes or maintenece fee's for their homes or costs associated with stays at an inn. This kind of thing would make inn's a social focal point as well.
Really, implenting a "cost of living" in some form is the best way and even in a lollipop themeparkish mmo you could make the debuffs very negligible after combining it into one "comfort" meter
Although, in a themepark MMO I'm not sure f there's a point as everything is so controlled and spoonfed that inflation is just perception (as if Blizzard is forced to make the mount impractically priced because they have no hold on inflation lol)
Players hate debuffs of, you have to do this or else you have things taken away from you. It's better to make the hunger "debuff" value the official default, and then add a "well-fed" buff to bring your status up to the intended "normal" value. Some players will be sharp enough to see that it's exactly the same system either way, but you'll get a lot less complaining from the others.
Players hate debuffs of, you have to do this or else you have things taken away from you. It's better to make the hunger "debuff" value the official default, and then add a "well-fed" buff to bring your status up to the intended "normal" value. Some players will be sharp enough to see that it's exactly the same system either way, but you'll get a lot less complaining from the others.
Yes there's ways you should probably present it differently.
All of this doesn't really address the real issue of inflation as this is just a gold sink. But to talk about inflation you have to know what kind of economy you're dealing with. If it's a crafting based economy like WoW or one like EvE where resources and products can be destroyed and there's addition cost in bringing the goods to market with broker's fees and taxes.
I don't know how to lower the accumulating of gold in many MMO's, but you can battle price inflation on the auction hall though. As long as you have an influx of new players anyway. But the AH needs to work different then in many games.
One of the problems with auction houses in games is that you can't really see what the demand is for certain items. You can only look at what is being offered. The actual demand can only be guessed about. If you don't see a certain item listed, you can only guess (especially as new player) if this is because it is highly in demand or not at all.
Another problem with the buyout system (I'm not talking about putting up an item for actual auction without buyout price) in most games, is that you cannot lower/raise the price directly without cancelling the offer. This causes certain problems with price competition. If you just happen to play outside prime time and you want to sell something that isn't offered atm on the AH, you are in a disadvantage to the person that puts the same item up for sale just after you. This is not real price competition. You should be able to adapt your buyout price any time so that if needed both sellers can lower their price to the minimum they want.
Auction houses also need a function for players to place an ad. To post what they are looking for and what price they offer for it. Or being able to offer services. Without this players might stop looking for their desired item on the AH if it is never shown. Or players assume that certain items will not sell.
This is all needed to battle the price inflation due to players that have accumulated so much gold that they don't care anymore about low or high prices. AH's need to work in a way to support actual price competition.
Spiral Knights has an inflation problem though. While it isn't necessarily as bad as most MMOs, CE prices have almost doubled in the past month. Considering CE is the single most important item in the game, that's a pretty big deal.
The problem is that the rate of gold increase is simply too fast for new goods to keep up for very long. If the rate of gold generation per player doubles every year, then how do you make twice as many goods useful to players every year? Double the number of armor slots every year? Anything that you might propose is self-evidently absurd to anyone who understands exponential growth.
"
if the person understands exponential growth they wouldn't set up an artificial leveling system which increases money earned in that manner. you could use slightly more complex math to make the rewards deminish based on 'pride'.
creatures +- x levels are unable to be impacted/looted by your character, so they don't drop loot. this means that the gold loot drop can be set up to be static/tangent/derivative based on relative level to character, and have a sub-linear progression in terms of drops because of the likelyhood and value you be nearly static in the interem levels and the spike a bit at cap.
all you have to do is change from a level based system to a merit/difficulty based system. this will allow a normal logrithmic progression of boss loot, a smaller linear progression of personal loot which is nice to have but not really worth anything.
"Anything that you might propose is self-evidently absurd to anyone who understands exponential growth."
even with exponential growth exponential cost could be used to deplete coffers. or a geometric increase of types of content to be able to be used. with either item decay and replacement (which desaturates the market for product) or with having NPC based upkeep costs like having to pay taxes or other repeat costs, you can decrease the coffer size tremendously. ballancing takes work but it is worth it.
"You can partially counter this by making higher level players scale down to the content, and Spiral Knights does exactly this." that wouldn't likely work since you would still be effected by gear and abbilities. you can do it much cleaner by not having mobs drop loot to people in groups with inappropriate levels, based on the time the mob dies. there are ways to institute this, and it increases replay value. also it keeps common world zone mobs from being killed by non-questers.
but still that is just how to make a leveling system work. it still erroneously assumes that a standard leveling system is the best approach, which it isn't. programmers can use fancy math and psycological trick to do better ;D
Inflation is the rate of change in prices as time passes. If farming causes all goods to always cost twice as much as they would otherwise, that doesn't affect inflation at all. In order for farming to cause changes in the rate of inflation, there need to be changes that cause the rate or relative effectiveness (as compared to just playing the game and not worrying about loot) of farming to drastically change. And even if that does happen, it will only be a temporary blip. That has no effect whatsoever on whether you have long-term hyperinflation or not.
What is the difference between a population on average earning 3 times as much (per unit time) as normal due to significantely higher farming activity compared to fighting "better" mobs? Assuming the mobs and farming session only yields gold, the end result is the same: 3 times as high gold income compared to the previous status quo.
Comments
Just as an idea, but perhaps the answer is in bringing an economist who understands MMOs into the fold from development on through to Live and expansions and beyond.
Game economies are just as alive, and moreso, than the bosses players fight. Perhaps more companies should devote employees solely to their care.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
I had actually been planning on making this thread for a while, but hadn't gotten around to doing so. It usually takes me at least a few days of mulling through an essay in my head before it comes out any good.
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One of the weird things about economics is that you either get it or you don't. Either you naturally think the right way to understand economics, or else you don't. If you do, then concepts like supply and demand seem intuitively obvious, and having university level courses to teach them seems about as silly as having university level courses teach healthy people how to walk or breathe. (Higher level economics courses get a lot harder, of course.)
And if you don't naturally get economics, then you can work and work and work to try to understand it, and it's never going to make all that much sense. And that's the sort of person who needs to worry a lot about getting scammed via e-mails, web sites, etc., because he won't notice that people trying to scam him are making claims that are obviously impossible.
It's also the sort of person who starts threads making claims about a game economy that are obviously impossible, even to someone who knows nothing about the game. I'm not pointing to any particular thread with that claim, and especially not the one that Deathofsage linked. Rather, I'm talking about threads like I saw on the Puzzle Pirates forums where people would say things to the effect of, "I'm trying to buy this good at this price, but no one will sell to me because everyone else pays twice as much. And I'm even trying to sell my finished goods at a much lower price than everyone else, but you stupid people won't let me because I can't get the materials. Therefore, the game economy is broken."
Another big problem with MMO economics is that players really doesn´t consume much stuff. You can pour all the cash you earned into buying some loot from the broker because otherwise you only need a little for some moneysinks.
Most regular people can´t save much money, because we need stuff. Food, alcohol, clothes, hardware (TV, computer), entertainment like games and movies and so on.
I wonder if MMOs shouldn't take an idea from "Eye of the beholder" and more or less force the players to eat.
Alright, I stand corrected.
As to your point about economics, that pretty much stands for math in general.
But yeah, it's like the things on facebook my friends share. A friend today shared a picture of poor child who'd apparently been horribly disfigured in a fire with the caption that Facebook will give $3 towards this child's care for each person who shares the link.
I'm sure you've been around long enough to remember the FW:FW:FW:FW: MICROSOFT WILL GIVE YOU $500 emails that went something to the effect of..
[MICROSOFT/AOL/YAHOO/SOMEONE] is studing how emails rotate around the world and has asked that you forward this to all of your friends. This email has a special sort of tracking attached to it so they'll know when you send it and if you send it to more than [X] people, they'll send you a check for $500 / a free computer / a free copy of [xyz software] etc.
And the people who forwarded it understood nothing about the sheer stupid amount of money that would build up (especially at $500/pop lol) nor anything about the internet really.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
wow - thanks all.. been having a hard time sleeping. Tonight before I go to bed I'm going to read some of this - I'm sure I'll be to sleep in no time.
Currently bored with MMO's.
Yeah I have found Quiz to be another of the "good" sandbox posters in my book. Quiz, Kyleran, and Loke666 are great posters IMO.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
That's nothing more than user error. Some people seem to be completely incapable of saving money. As soon as they get some money, they'll spend it. Or perhaps rather, they constantly see something they want to buy and can't afford, so they farm like crazy to save up until they can buy it, and go right back to having no money. At which point, they immediately move on to another item that they want but can't afford.
Such people will always be broke, no matter how much money they get. Doubling the rate at which they get gold only means that they either go through the cycle of buying something twice as fast, or pick items that cost twice as much, or something to that effect. Give them gold ten times as fast, even nothing else was changed for anything else in the game (so that gold isn't merely worth 1/10 as much as before), and they'll still forever be broke.
It's like that in real-life, too. People see things they want but can't afford and buy them, and then carry credit card balances in the thousands of dollars for years at a time. They max out their borrowing capacity from traditional sources, and then rely on more dubious sources like payday loans. Doubling their income won't get them out of debt; it will only mean that they immediately start spending twice as much.
That's why lottery winners are likely to be broke only a few short years after they win the lottery. The lottery is mostly a self-selecting pool of people who can't manage money; that's why they're playing the lottery in the first place. Pick someone who can't manage money and give him a lot of it, and he'll predictably waste it all pretty quickly. They get more income than they reasonably expected to earn in a lifetime, then spend it all within a few years.
What to do about people like that is a tricky question (in real-life politics; if you're in the US, think Social Security). I kind of hope that someday when they're playing an MMORPG where they're constantly broke and other people seem rich, it will click that they're doing something wrong. If so, that could easily be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a lifetime. If it worked, then a year of playing an MMORPG could be more valuable than a college degree. But I'm not optimistic that it will work, or at least, not for very many people.
But whatever you think is the best idea, I'm pretty sure that giving them more because they've already spent all they had (as the poster I quoted proposes) isn't it. That's just subsidizing stupidity.
* Not at all saying wow's repair system is punshing.
Broke players in Warcraft tend to be people who die a lot, whether it's soloing and not reading quest text and realizing that you're not supposed to just go find the mob and attack it (UNLESS YOU'RE A PALADIN) or whether because their casual raiding guild wipes a lot.
When you die a lot, especially with the repair normalization that came with Cata, you burn through a lot of gold, no matter what class you're on. Of course, progression guilds (whether friendly or hardcore) usually offered players a daily amount for repair expenses and some even allowed the players to roll greed for boe drops or sold boe drops and split the gold amongst the players.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
I wasn't talking about disposable income, but more of required payments, like repairs and such. If those expenses are too high, everyone will be broke except people that spend a lot of time farming.
People need some stuff. But most Americans don't "need" nearly as much as they think they do. You need food, but you don't need to regularly eat out at expensive restaurants. You don't really need a television, but even if you think you do, you don't need a 42" model. You don't need to pay to go to the movies. You need housing, but you don't need a 1000 ft^2 house.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't have any of that stuff. I am saying that you shouldn't simply spend whatever you feel like spending until forced to stop because you can't borrow any more money.
It's been a long time since I played WoW. But when I played it, selling the non-soulbound raid loot that raids got would almost always pay the repair costs incurred in the raid many times over. And that's even though the bulk of the good loot was soulbound. If you think you can't afford 200g in death penalty expenses to get 1000g worth of loot, you're doing it wrong. And if you're routinely starting a raid and wiping without killing anything, you're also doing it wrong.
op!inflation was invented so the real culprit could be hidden!check eve online it took one of the group what a year to find out the cheating!if they haddent been so dedicated as a group that skeem could have gone on for year!check us in canada!
we have ipc(indice du prix a la consommation(french,sorry dont know what it is called in each country but we all have it!)
they hired mathematian to play with this formula!why bother?the end result is that ipc is lower 1% instead of 4 or 5%imagine it doesnt cost 100$ for exemple to buy food they made an error it was costing only 97 $ ,result no paid raise véi dont even know all the is related to ipc.but people say it would have costed us less to tax us more!ya it is that big of a deal!
basicly it is a giga tax !and next year when people complain they ll say it is the fault of inflation!in the end it is the same for gaming!they go try their skeem in gaming if it works and it is hard to get caught in real life it will be impossible because
people question less in real life !
that is the real reason why inflation really happen in gaming|!
Depending on raid rules, and rolls, a player might never get any trash loot. Plus not every player raids. I never had any problems with money in wow because I farmed, but my nephew never had any money because he didn't and only went on pug raids. For someone who pugs and has a higher death ratio, than sellable loot gained those repair costs add up very quickly.
Raid guilds aren't always an option either since they want people on at scheduled times, which he couldn't do.
Inflation is actually very tricky to define, and there are some judgment call choices. You can get a $1000 computer today, and you could get a $1000 computer ten years ago. But they're nowhere near equivalent, so to say that computer prices haven't changed is silly. If today's computer offers ten times the performance (to make up an arbitrary number), does that mean that a $1000 computer a decade ago is equivalent to a $100 computer today? Except that you can't get a new $100 computer today.
Technology changes very fast, of course, but you can make the same argument for many other goods. A $30,000 car today is not the same as a $30,000 car ten years ago.
And what about substitute goods? Suppose that Global MegaCorp sold widgets at $100 each ten years ago. Then they saw that they had a monopoly, so they doubled their prices. Some investors saw that it was still profitable to sell widgets at $100 each, so they started Generic KnockOffs to sell widgets at $100 each. Global MegaCorp concludes that they can make more money by relying on a heavy advertising blitz to convince some customers to pay $200 each for their widgets, so they don't slash prices.
So, what happened to the price of widgets in the last decade? Did they double, or did they stay the same? Does your answer change if you think Global MegaCorp's widgets really are a lot better than those of Generic KnockOffs? There's actually good reason to believe that substitute goods will systematically cause governments to overestimate inflation if they're careless.
You are wrong. Here is why: farming does not happen instantly, it is a function of time. Equilibrium price is not reached instantly either. Prices may increase as times passes, even if it is for a limited amount of time. Special case when the time is so large that we can model it as if the equilibrium price is never reached.
Inflation is the rate of change in prices as time passes. If farming causes all goods to always cost twice as much as they would otherwise, that doesn't affect inflation at all. In order for farming to cause changes in the rate of inflation, there need to be changes that cause the rate or relative effectiveness (as compared to just playing the game and not worrying about loot) of farming to drastically change. And even if that does happen, it will only be a temporary blip. That has no effect whatsoever on whether you have long-term hyperinflation or not.
Thanks for the kind words (and same to some others that I'm not quoting here).
For what it's worth, while I play some sandbox games, I'm not exclusively a sandbox player, and probably play theme parks more than sandboxes.
Glad I could help you with that.
I'm not familiar with the game but a "hunger" debuff would be interesting, it would also potentially boost mini-professions. You could give an "unrested" debuff as well technically and charge players taxes or maintenece fee's for their homes or costs associated with stays at an inn. This kind of thing would make inn's a social focal point as well.
Really, implenting a "cost of living" in some form is the best way and even in a lollipop themeparkish mmo you could make the debuffs very negligible after combining it into one "comfort" meter
Although, in a themepark MMO I'm not sure f there's a point as everything is so controlled and spoonfed that inflation is just perception (as if Blizzard is forced to make the mount impractically priced because they have no hold on inflation lol)
Players hate debuffs of, you have to do this or else you have things taken away from you. It's better to make the hunger "debuff" value the official default, and then add a "well-fed" buff to bring your status up to the intended "normal" value. Some players will be sharp enough to see that it's exactly the same system either way, but you'll get a lot less complaining from the others.
Yes there's ways you should probably present it differently.
All of this doesn't really address the real issue of inflation as this is just a gold sink. But to talk about inflation you have to know what kind of economy you're dealing with. If it's a crafting based economy like WoW or one like EvE where resources and products can be destroyed and there's addition cost in bringing the goods to market with broker's fees and taxes.
I don't know how to lower the accumulating of gold in many MMO's, but you can battle price inflation on the auction hall though. As long as you have an influx of new players anyway. But the AH needs to work different then in many games.
One of the problems with auction houses in games is that you can't really see what the demand is for certain items. You can only look at what is being offered. The actual demand can only be guessed about. If you don't see a certain item listed, you can only guess (especially as new player) if this is because it is highly in demand or not at all.
Another problem with the buyout system (I'm not talking about putting up an item for actual auction without buyout price) in most games, is that you cannot lower/raise the price directly without cancelling the offer. This causes certain problems with price competition. If you just happen to play outside prime time and you want to sell something that isn't offered atm on the AH, you are in a disadvantage to the person that puts the same item up for sale just after you. This is not real price competition. You should be able to adapt your buyout price any time so that if needed both sellers can lower their price to the minimum they want.
Auction houses also need a function for players to place an ad. To post what they are looking for and what price they offer for it. Or being able to offer services. Without this players might stop looking for their desired item on the AH if it is never shown. Or players assume that certain items will not sell.
This is all needed to battle the price inflation due to players that have accumulated so much gold that they don't care anymore about low or high prices. AH's need to work in a way to support actual price competition.
Spiral Knights has an inflation problem though. While it isn't necessarily as bad as most MMOs, CE prices have almost doubled in the past month. Considering CE is the single most important item in the game, that's a pretty big deal.
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The problem is that the rate of gold increase is simply too fast for new goods to keep up for very long. If the rate of gold generation per player doubles every year, then how do you make twice as many goods useful to players every year? Double the number of armor slots every year? Anything that you might propose is self-evidently absurd to anyone who understands exponential growth.
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if the person understands exponential growth they wouldn't set up an artificial leveling system which increases money earned in that manner. you could use slightly more complex math to make the rewards deminish based on 'pride'.
creatures +- x levels are unable to be impacted/looted by your character, so they don't drop loot. this means that the gold loot drop can be set up to be static/tangent/derivative based on relative level to character, and have a sub-linear progression in terms of drops because of the likelyhood and value you be nearly static in the interem levels and the spike a bit at cap.
all you have to do is change from a level based system to a merit/difficulty based system. this will allow a normal logrithmic progression of boss loot, a smaller linear progression of personal loot which is nice to have but not really worth anything.
"Anything that you might propose is self-evidently absurd to anyone who understands exponential growth."
even with exponential growth exponential cost could be used to deplete coffers. or a geometric increase of types of content to be able to be used. with either item decay and replacement (which desaturates the market for product) or with having NPC based upkeep costs like having to pay taxes or other repeat costs, you can decrease the coffer size tremendously. ballancing takes work but it is worth it.
"You can partially counter this by making higher level players scale down to the content, and Spiral Knights does exactly this." that wouldn't likely work since you would still be effected by gear and abbilities. you can do it much cleaner by not having mobs drop loot to people in groups with inappropriate levels, based on the time the mob dies. there are ways to institute this, and it increases replay value. also it keeps common world zone mobs from being killed by non-questers.
but still that is just how to make a leveling system work. it still erroneously assumes that a standard leveling system is the best approach, which it isn't. programmers can use fancy math and psycological trick to do better ;D
What is the difference between a population on average earning 3 times as much (per unit time) as normal due to significantely higher farming activity compared to fighting "better" mobs? Assuming the mobs and farming session only yields gold, the end result is the same: 3 times as high gold income compared to the previous status quo.