Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Designing a Game Economy
qattack
Member Posts: 14
I am designing a MMORPG concept. I admit that I will never FINISH making the game, but I'm just having fun.
A major problem with all MMORPGs that I've played is that Gold (or whatever currency is used) and uber-loot eventually saturates the market, becoming worthless. This leads to high-level characters freely giving low-level players huge handouts. (I realize that not everyone sees this as a "problem", but pretend that it is...)
How would I design a game economy to circumvent this problem? Obviously, there should be ways to get the currency out of circulation (taxes, character upkeep, whatever). My idea is to have a "Life Essence" (LE) replace Gold as standard currency. Most skills would use a certain amount of this LE: the higher the skill, the more LE used. You would receive LE as loot and it could be traded as currency.
I plan on keeping this LE fairly scarce, so players would not throw the currency around lightly. However, when you consider that a high-level character may have 500,000 LE, whereas an entry-level character may have only 100 LE, it is nothing for the high-level character to dump off 20,000 LE to the lower-level character.
How could I get around this? I want the low-level characters to work for what they get. I realize this isn't EVERYONE'S idea of a good game, but pretend it is. 
Comments
The major problem with pretty much every MMORPG economy can be summed up with one idea;
They're ALL completely open systems. You have open influx, and open outflux. The most common way to try to control this is to make certain avenues of outflux mandatory, or at least make certain forms of outflux desirable (i.e. Money Sinks). The problem is that no matter the outflux rate, so long as the influx is open, players are going to learn more efficient ways of increasing their personal influx and minimizing their outflux (or just as bad, using their outflux methods to multiply their influx, like SWG harvesting machines)
The only way you can begin to have a realistic economy is with a closed system; No influx, no outflux. Basically, there needs to be a finite amount of money and resources in the game. Massive, but finite. This means that influx will drop off until resources have been "lost" or "spent" by the player, allowing them to reenter the computer-controlled portion of the system.
Of course, that doesn't quite simulate the real-world, either. Our system isn't totally closed. We've got a very slow influx, and and even slower outflux; this was aggravated by going from hard-currency to conceptual money; in other words, when we stopped using a gold-standard. Even so, even when the gold-standard was in effect, there was a slow influx as more money was minted. Outflux happens as money is lost, destroyed, etc.
Additionally, the population growth rates of MMOs don't follow real-life population growths, and population definitely has a lot to do with the economy; When you've a smaller pool of people and a larger sum of money, you've got a heavy saturation. When you've a quickly growing population with an influx rate based strongly on the population size (as is the case in pretty much all MMOs) you very quickly reach a point where there is more money in the system than there are valuable commodities (weapons, armor, etc.) so the value of the currency is seriously devalued, and there's a massive imbalance in the funds between veterans and newcomers, as you yourself stated, which leads to "twinking", or it leads to increased farming, or illicit gold purchases so that the have-nots can compete with the haves.
Basically, what my long-winded ramble is getting at is this; You cannot fix an open-system economy by trying to regulate influx and outflux. You need either a static closed-system economy, or a mostly-static economy where influx and outflux from the system isn't dependent primarily on player actions.
I lag the ability to explain more how all this would work but i suggest you take a look how Darkfall will handle its economics (if it ever gets launched).
WoW isn't "on to" something. As I understand it, EQ did Bind-on-Acquire years ago.
And I, at least, *still* think it's a lousy system. For one thing, it's utterly unrealistic. If I can drop an item (and thereby destroy it, another silly idea) I should be able to sell it, or give it away. It's a level of mechanical unrealism that I find intolerable. I find it especially bad because it's an ineffective patch, trying to prevent the over-saturation of "uber-loot" throughout the game, but instead it actually facilitates that; You've got an uber-uber-item that you can't sell, but they're still so common that you do sell all of the uber-items you find. And of course, everyone wants the uber-uber-BoA-items, so they run the same dungeons over and over again, selling all the lesser uber-items they get trying to get at the really good ones.
The previous poster had it right; Don't have uber-items in the game, and that'll be a start.
CLICK HERE TO GET A LIST OF FREE MMO LISTS!!!
A player-run economy...this is my intention.
In fact, I'm taking it so far that 99.9% of useful items in the game must be made by player characters...For example, all players will start with (next to) NOTHING. A weapons crafter will need to supply "crude daggers" for these characters to start off with.
Monsters will drop only components that crafters can use, perhaps some other odds and ends, but no weapons, etc. (though some monsters' parts may be used as makeshift weapons)
Other crafting material will be gained by mining, harvesting, etc.
In this way, I hope that crafters can be kept busy making USEFUL items, NOT "grinding" their way to the sixtieth level. Another problem with many games today is that, given enough raw materials (which can be provided by a high-level character), players can (and will) sit at the keyboard clicking for five straight hours, just making stuff and destroying it, "power-leveling" and contributing nothing useful to the gaming community.
This is another problem I hope to get around. If I can figure out a way around my original problem (surplus money being handed down to low levels), this problem should correct itself somewhat.
My goal is to somehow keep a tight reign on the amount of currency that can be gained, and make every unit of currency count at every level. I know, that's nearly impossible. But I think it can be done...
A player-run economy on its own, however, won't prevent the market from becoming unbalanced. A common "currency" of some sort must exist, or else trades will become unwieldy.
Gold is generally not a good choice for a common currency because it's really not very useful. Sure, you can buy things from NPCs with it, but the really good items are generally not for sale at the NPCs. Players accumulate more gold than they know what to do with and it becomes worthless. Ways can be invented to remove the gold from circulation--taxes, rent, theft--but you really need to stretch your imagination to get rid of enough of it.
Besides, in my game, there are no NPCs whatsoever, leaving it up to players to run the economy. Perhaps players can place automated merchants in their absence to facilitate trading, but these merchants will also be characters, leveled just as other characters would be.
To meet my goal, two things must occur:
1. Currency must be removed from the economy continuously to keep it in short supply.
2. Some deterrent must exist against large handouts. This includes not only currency, but valuable items as well.
My working idea is to use "Life Essence" (LE), as described in my original post. I am able to find more ways to realistically take this currency out of circulation. After all, I created it so I can control its properties and uses. As for items, most of them will have some type of durability factor.
This leaves #2 as the major problem. What deterrents can be created to prevent this abuse?
Taken to the extreme, players of significantly different levels could be prevented from trading with each other. Obviously that will not work; I would like to avoid such artifical measures anyhow.
Though many people will not like what i am abaout to say i think it is good advice
Runescape had one of the best economy's (p2p not f2p) out there. One of the reasons was the fact that there was basically no end game and that only like 1 or 2 people has totally maxed out skills in the somethning like 6 years the game has been out. sure u could dump money on a lower level player but to get rich in that game it required some thinking and a lot of player interaction. In order to become a money making machine you were required to either do tasks for higher level players (like run essence) or work your way up until you had to pay noobs to do these task for you. The point is that this economy was skills and interaction driven rather then item driven because, while party hats were uber expensive, they do not drop so there suply is totally limited and can only go down. So they would never saturate the market.
Money is constantly "sunk" out of the economy, most all stuff is crafted, all valueable stuff is crafted, all can be destroyed, "rich" players don't really share (much) as they always want more ISK for their next purchase, no one can afford "everything/anything"
The "implant system" can be compared to your LE, in that they/it can easily be lost in battle.
Players often purchase insurance on both themselves (clones) and their ships, this investment is "sunk"
They economy is amazingly stable after three plus years.
Eve Bashers - Am I wrong somehow?
While an interesting idea even a Player run economy you still have if no loot no goodies what will combat folks fight for and how to design other systems besides combat. There will always be stress between the crafters and the combat folks.
Then in today's mmorpgs there is no getting around the in game farmers and the compaines that hire them. So no matter how good or well made a player economy is it can be easily ruined in a simple off game purchase of ebay or the farmer companies themselves. If there is anything a mmorpg player wants that is in game and suposedly a rare item, the in game farmers take the rareity and make it common and easily obtainable. Take away the carrot and the prize no longer seems viable at all.
borderline, my son plays Runescape as his Internet connection is poor and Runescape isn't a connection hog. (I'm divorced and he lives far away)
The game I'm envisioning would (most likely) not allow you to max out skills. I'm unfamiliar with the terms of Runescape and have a few questions.
What are "p2p" and "f2p"? [Edit: My son answered this..."pay/free to play"]
To what degree did the higher-level players depend on the lower-level players to do tasks and what types of tasks/how did these tasks help the higher-level characters?
What are "party hats" and how is the supply limited? [Edit: My son answered this as well: basically holiday party favors given out years ago, only to wear for decoration]
You said that "u could dump money on a lower level player". How easy is it to find someone to give your low-level character money?
Thanx for the ideas!
Thankyou for giving me an idea for a good economy
the way you do influx is you try to simulate the real world flow of cash inward. To free these up you would need mandatory ingame character fees lets say you can only hold a small amount of gold on your person, your character then has to deposite money into the bank, which charges X amount per Y time to free these up, although this isn't the best way to keep money flowing it's just a thought, also it'd hurt places like IGE if they keep losing massive quantities of money that had to be stored in the bank there fore a win win.
So after Y time system allows X resources to increase by Z amount, on top of the fact that there are sinks that help to free up resources so others can get access to them. the main key thing would be limiting ultra uber drops to Z amount, as to keep balance of items and currency in balance. And then add Z amount of a item per player that joins the game to the random drop pool so if for 100 players it's 1 full plate mail uber suit then if it grows by 100 you get another chance that a full plate mail uber suit can drop. I will be writing this down myself cause you helped me come up with my own idea for a system, btw I also am working on designing a mmorpg project yes it'll probably never be finshed unless i get into the industry that is.
Ex: WoW player
Working on Black Ice Games' game design team as a Lead game designer, as well as technical animator to build portfolio games.
http://www.nationofshadows.net/BlackIce/
Zoey, my idea is that the combat characters will fight for "Life Essence" (LE), which is basically required to initiate any skill, be it special fighting skills, casting magic spells, crafting...almost any skill higher than basic level. Thus, LE will constantly be used up and need replacing.
Game farmers...there is another definite threat to the economy. How can this be countered? I know there is a way! Maybe it cannot be eliminated, but can be reduced some degree. How do you keep the RARE items rare and out of the hands of the farmers?
Evilshadow, I was thinking along the same lines...limit the amount of "Life Essence" (LE) depending on the amount of players that enter the world. However, while this can directly apply to items (such as your full plate mail uber suit), I think the LE in my game would need to be based off total character levels, as the higher the character level, the more LE is required to function.
As for the bank idea, that would soften the problem of farmers in relation to gold, but the items themselves would still be a problem. If you found the Holy Grail and placed it inventory waiting to be sold, there is nothing that can be done to the Holy Grail to devalue it. If this method was used, people would almost need to buy items with their money instead of putting it in the bank and then resell these items as they needed money.
This is the type of brainstorming I am hoping to get out of this thread. Good thoughts!
Blizzard did a pretty good job, BOP(Binds on pickup)
And for craft items
Make trade limit on crafted items manufacturer to purchaser, with a limit to the mat resources in the world, plus add cooldowns on highly good items.
or a BoAT(binds on after Traded) True this would still allow a bit of IGE on items but it would be much more so limited with this in effect.
Ex: WoW player
Working on Black Ice Games' game design team as a Lead game designer, as well as technical animator to build portfolio games.
http://www.nationofshadows.net/BlackIce/
In Eve basically money is exp.
You buy clone so you don't lose skills when you die. You use money to buy ships. Fittings. Ammo. Everything.
Basically making money is the grind. You die, you lose money.