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Economics
Nalvest
Member Posts: 22
I know there are lots of stuff going on in the main forums around economies and it's clear that one aspect that most game developers miss is the concept of economics and the impact that changes make in their environment.
I look at games like Lineage or Everquest and see major issues in their economies. The key there is that no game developer ever includes an economist to look at and tell them the impacts of their designs / changes to the economics of the game.
The whole environment including crafting, how much gold drops, rare weapons, etc. is all about the economy of the game. One thing that I think will make a game more successful will be for someone to actually strike an economic balance and work to maintain that balance.
If there is a weakness in the system there will ALWAYS be players to exploit it (and it will not take long). Frequently game developers respond to weaknesses in the system by removing that weakness without understanding what they are really doing to the economy.
Okay, what's the point of this message and why is it here? What I want to know is if HJ is planning to do anything about economics? Do they plan to actually put some time into it or just let things go as they might? I think there is a real opportunity here for a company to put that behind-the-scenes effort in that can make a game better (despite the fact that most players won't even notice it directly, the players will notice the game "works" better).
Comments
All I know is that they are focusing hardcore on economics to make sure this does not happen. So rest assured.
Bah, I'm not assured... I'd like to hear that they have an economist studying the models and coming up with a real solution before I'd "rest assured"
Agent_X7 AKA J Star
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Notice: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com or its management.
Of course there is economic balance is real life. What you are thinking of is there are differences in economic status (e.g. I have less money than Bill Gates). The economies are balanced and there are some very smart people trying to keep them that way by manipulating the factors in the world (such as interest rates).
What I'm concerned about is games that don't have economic balance or frequently change the economic balance. Take an example like Everquest 2 where they have constantly changed the balance of the economy by "nerfing" skills or even changing the way the game is played. A specific example would be when EQ2 added attuning, it is now no longer possible to use a weapon and resell it to another player. That has a HUGE economic impact, it massively changes the balance and the world now must restructure itself around that situation and I'm fairly sure that EQ2 had no idea what the true economic impact of that change was, they just thought it would be a good idea and would do something in the right direction.
Agent_X7 AKA J Star
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Notice: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com or its management.
Actually it does happen, but just more gradually then people notice. When something like the Airplane or Computer gets invented there is a major change in the economy and balance, but that's a different story.
One of the things that would generically concern me is that the makers of HJ think about what the economy will balance to in their initial design so that they don't have to make a "nerf" or "rebalancing" decision in the game. Changes like that only serve too annoy the community and typically hurt the user base.
One of the main reasons for any major shift in economical foundations of games is the illicit buying and selling of items using real money. Game designers have been wanting to do something about this issue for awhile, but you won't see it be outlawed in any game for a big reason:
*They want the cash flow from the accounts who are farming.*
What this means is that game companies aren't going fully stop the buying and trading of the items in a game for real money because it's making them money by the account that's being paid for. If a game company steps up and totally stops all that kind of activity then they'll lose profit. It's a double edged sword. Farmers will just as easily migrate to the next game rather than keep arguing about the 3,000,000 damage sword that they were trying to sell to someone for $4,000 before their account got banned.
And arguably, the people buying these items are doing as much to hurt in game economies as anyone else. These are the people who are condoning the facts that there's items out there they want, and they'll do anything for them. I've seen in game items sell for 1,000 gold, but then after duplications and constant trades from third party sites, the items dropped to about 400 gold.
To blame a company for any sort of economic structuring isn't the problem. The problem is the people willing to ruin a game by saturating it with bought characters and items.
While that's a good argument, it was much better 3-5 years ago. Nowadays is it, as you point out, expected behaviour. Sony has gone to far as to endorse the behavour and make it easier for people to buy and sell stuff.
When you know the behaviour is going to be in place, you can plan for it, adjust for it and deal with it before you release the game rather than impact everyone who buys the game by releasing a devasting, cripple, game changing patch.
Buying and selling of items for real money can and will always be an economic problem within games. While it does have its benefits, there's always the negative impact. Sony has made a stand so that they can weasel a few cents on the dollar, but sites like IGE are still reeling in the money and not looking back to care that one video game company has shaved off probably 2% of the profits they earn from that game alone.
The fact is that we as gamers have to be ready for an ever changing economy because of these things. Until the best weapons in the game can be found off a level 1 creature with a 25% drop rate, we'll always see horrible fluctuations.
On the other hand, a player run economy where only the top X% of the players are able to make super uber weapon Y only puts a serious dampening on the economy. Those players then have the ability to charge whatever they want simply because they have enough skill to be able to make those types of weapons and nobody else can. As soon as someone moves into the near range of being able to make those kinds of weapons, you see the economy shift because someone's about to infringe on a cornered market.
Let's face it, humans are greedy. Whether in a game or in real life the strife is money. We as gamers are seeing the trends moreso in games than in our regular economy because it's something we're interacting with first hand... somewhat. If you really want to see a stable working environment, hope that the council that's been created for this game is there to help set pricings of items and work to limit selling of intellectual goods.
My brother's an Economist, and he has the following advice about MMO inflation:
The easiest way to stop inflation is to make sure the ratio of the total supply of gold to the total supply of items doesn't change (this is much simpler in games than in real life, as you don't have things like inventions, disasters, new laws, or business cycles to worry about). Selling the gold for money doesn't matter - it's the 24-7 production of gold via farming that causes inflation. To solve inflation, what they need to do is make sure items generated by farming/crafting plus items bought from NPCs minus items sold to them (with an item that can sell for X gold to other players being equal to X gold) is roughly equal to gold generated by farming/crafting plus money paid by NPCs minus money recieved from them. Of course, the items themselves have to be generated at balanced proportions so that one item doesn't plummit while another skyrockets. Note that the junky "sell this to the first NPC vendor you see" items increase gold production, not item production, so the items actually have to be useful. Tricky, but well-designed drop programming, with drops being responsive to changes in market prices, could accomplish this by, say, responding to inflation with increased item drops relative to gold drops and to deflation by the reverse. This would work especially well, because people would know it was coming and would respond to inflation by selling more (before prices drop) and buying less, which would reduce prices, so the market would adjust on its own before the drop adjustment even had its full effect. Sure, there'd be some cycles, but they would be minor, and savvy investors would reduce them even more because fixing the market before the drop rate does can earn you some quick cash; besides, the important thing is you wouldn't see any of this unending inflation that you see in most MMOs.
...Or Simutronics could just do what they usually do to keep a market stable: run in-game festivals and events with GM and NPC merchants only appearing during that time with unique items.