This has to be one of the most useless and pointless things I have ever seen trying to clamor for relevancy surrounding a video game.
Anything else about this game would have been more interesting. The base building, the ships, space, the procedural generation, the updates, etc. Even the actual in-game economy.
I'm glad I can completely and utterly ignore this with absolutely zero effect on me playing the game. Which just goes to show how pointless and useless it is. Ever more hilarious is that you wouldn't actually even need blockchain to do any of this. It's at the point where this whole blockchain, crypto, NFT crap is just annoyingly desperate cringe trying to inject itself into gaming.
Where are all the other third party currency projects out there?
I mean, Pippi for Conan Exiles has it's own third party currency mechanic that's more customizable on a per-server basis...
All I can say to that is LOL.
Looking into it, that's specifically a mod for server hosted games... And that's a really deep cut. It's not going to work in ...well.. ANY live service game like NMS...
Everyone says that there's so many options out there that can do it better than Blockchain. This isn't it.
Blockchain can create a custom token, distribute an airdrop at particular intervals, trade between any players regardless of server. Regardless of activity. For any items. In game or outside of the game. On gray markets. With scalable resources to monitor the economy, and its success and use of the currency.
The simple fact is, MOST gray markets, if not all... Use fiat to buy things like goods and services from other players because there's no simple infrastructure to do it out there, except.... Blockchain.
This has to be one of the most useless and pointless things I have ever seen trying to clamor for relevancy surrounding a video game.
Anything else about this game would have been more interesting. The base building, the ships, space, the procedural generation, the updates, etc. Even the actual in-game economy.
I'm glad I can completely and utterly ignore this with absolutely zero effect on me playing the game. Which just goes to show how pointless and useless it is. Ever more hilarious is that you wouldn't actually even need blockchain to do any of this. It's at the point where this whole blockchain, crypto, NFT crap is just annoyingly desperate cringe trying to inject itself into gaming.
Where are all the other third party currency projects out there?
I mean, Pippi for Conan Exiles has it's own third party currency mechanic that's more customizable on a per-server basis...
All I can say to that is LOL.
Looking into it, that's specifically a mod for server hosted games... And that's a really deep cut. It's not going to work in ...well.. ANY live service game like NMS...
Everyone says that there's so many options out there that can do it better than Blockchain. This isn't it.
Blockchain can create a custom token, distribute an airdrop at particular intervals, trade between any players regardless of server. Regardless of activity. For any items. In game or outside of the game. On gray markets. With scalable resources to monitor the economy, and its success and use of the currency.
The simple fact is, MOST gray markets, if not all... Use fiat to buy things like goods and services from other players because there's no simple infrastructure to do it out there, except.... Blockchain.
Because third party solutions are made by the community for the community, and therefore for the individual game(s) the community interacts with. The tech and implementation follows suit.
For Exiles, you need to cater to the per server requirements since each servers community and needs may be different.
A singular currency ecosystem does not help that. At best it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with.
NMS being a shared online space, has different requirements that allows for a singular currency. The fact it's only one group using it extends that viability.
You are vastly overcomplicating the necessary mechanics of monopoly money for roleplay too by trying to swing that grey market stuff in there. In fact that is what I'd say made things go awry and enable the gamified inflation of the currency in the first place.
They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do.
This has to be one of the most useless and pointless things I have ever seen trying to clamor for relevancy surrounding a video game.
Anything else about this game would have been more interesting. The base building, the ships, space, the procedural generation, the updates, etc. Even the actual in-game economy.
I'm glad I can completely and utterly ignore this with absolutely zero effect on me playing the game. Which just goes to show how pointless and useless it is. Ever more hilarious is that you wouldn't actually even need blockchain to do any of this. It's at the point where this whole blockchain, crypto, NFT crap is just annoyingly desperate cringe trying to inject itself into gaming.
Where are all the other third party currency projects out there?
I mean, Pippi for Conan Exiles has it's own third party currency mechanic that's more customizable on a per-server basis...
All I can say to that is LOL.
Looking into it, that's specifically a mod for server hosted games... And that's a really deep cut. It's not going to work in ...well.. ANY live service game like NMS...
Everyone says that there's so many options out there that can do it better than Blockchain. This isn't it.
Blockchain can create a custom token, distribute an airdrop at particular intervals, trade between any players regardless of server. Regardless of activity. For any items. In game or outside of the game. On gray markets. With scalable resources to monitor the economy, and its success and use of the currency.
The simple fact is, MOST gray markets, if not all... Use fiat to buy things like goods and services from other players because there's no simple infrastructure to do it out there, except.... Blockchain.
Because third party solutions are made by the community for the community, and therefore for the individual game(s) the community interacts with. The tech and implementation follows suit.
For Exiles, you need to cater to the per server requirements since each servers community and needs may be different.
A singular currency ecosystem does not help that. At best it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with.
NMS being a shared online space, has different requirements that allows for a singular currency. The fact it's only one group using it extends that viability.
You are vastly overcomplicating the necessary mechanics of monopoly money for roleplay too by trying to swing that grey market stuff in there. In fact that is what I'd say made things go awry and enable the gamified inflation of the currency in the first place.
They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do.
It's not overcomplicating anything it's actually creating a solution for something that doesn't exist utilizing the path of least resistance.
You want to create a reward currency in a game that doesn't have it. What do you do?
You can create a mod where you're able... But you aren't able to in NMS.
You say it's overcomplicating things, but sharing a community on Reddit is what MOST games do, whether for functional or RP reasons. Gray markets are pretty much in every game whether you like it or not but the article extends a gray market that uses Blockchain that DOESNT take real money, and has no fees associated with it. There are other games that can do similar whether it's a barter system or they do use real money, but this is a novel way to do it that makes a lot of sense.
You're working too hard to come up with reasons why this solution doesn't work when in fact it's the only solution to accomplish what they wanted to do.
You give one example of a game that has a mod that can accomplish similar tasks, but that's not the solution.
This has to be one of the most useless and pointless things I have ever seen trying to clamor for relevancy surrounding a video game.
Anything else about this game would have been more interesting. The base building, the ships, space, the procedural generation, the updates, etc. Even the actual in-game economy.
I'm glad I can completely and utterly ignore this with absolutely zero effect on me playing the game. Which just goes to show how pointless and useless it is. Ever more hilarious is that you wouldn't actually even need blockchain to do any of this. It's at the point where this whole blockchain, crypto, NFT crap is just annoyingly desperate cringe trying to inject itself into gaming.
Where are all the other third party currency projects out there?
I mean, Pippi for Conan Exiles has it's own third party currency mechanic that's more customizable on a per-server basis...
All I can say to that is LOL.
Looking into it, that's specifically a mod for server hosted games... And that's a really deep cut. It's not going to work in ...well.. ANY live service game like NMS...
Everyone says that there's so many options out there that can do it better than Blockchain. This isn't it.
Blockchain can create a custom token, distribute an airdrop at particular intervals, trade between any players regardless of server. Regardless of activity. For any items. In game or outside of the game. On gray markets. With scalable resources to monitor the economy, and its success and use of the currency.
The simple fact is, MOST gray markets, if not all... Use fiat to buy things like goods and services from other players because there's no simple infrastructure to do it out there, except.... Blockchain.
Because third party solutions are made by the community for the community, and therefore for the individual game(s) the community interacts with. The tech and implementation follows suit.
For Exiles, you need to cater to the per server requirements since each servers community and needs may be different.
A singular currency ecosystem does not help that. At best it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with.
NMS being a shared online space, has different requirements that allows for a singular currency. The fact it's only one group using it extends that viability.
You are vastly overcomplicating the necessary mechanics of monopoly money for roleplay too by trying to swing that grey market stuff in there. In fact that is what I'd say made things go awry and enable the gamified inflation of the currency in the first place.
They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do.
It's not overcomplicating anything it's actually creating a solution for something that doesn't exist utilizing the path of least resistance.
You want to create a reward currency in a game that doesn't have it. What do you do?
You can create a mod where you're able... But you aren't able to in NMS.
You say it's overcomplicating things, but sharing a community on Reddit is what MOST games do, whether for functional or RP reasons. Gray markets are pretty much in every game whether you like it or not but the article extends a gray market that uses Blockchain that DOESNT take real money, and has no fees associated with it. There are other games that can do similar whether it's a barter system or they do use real money, but this is a novel way to do it that makes a lot of sense.
You're working too hard to come up with reasons why this solution doesn't work when in fact it's the only solution to accomplish what they wanted to do.
You give one example of a game that has a mod that can accomplish similar tasks, but that's not the solution.
It's creating a solution for something that doesn't need to exist, which is why it didn't exist.
If they wanted a 'reward currency' they could have done any variety of things that are simple to create and implement.
Being a mod or not is irrelevant, that's just the level of integration it has with the game in a direct sense. Not the case of does the currency exist as a mechanic and what control the participating users have. You can whinge about "this game can't use mods", but the fact is the same kind of currency could be setup similar to how they leverage the cryptocurrency. That is not a hurdle here (it's actually not a hurdle at all, NMS has tons of mods, it having live service elements is irrelevant).
What part of sharing a community on Reddit mandates a tangible currency? And I agree there are other games that can do similar with a barter system yes... like NMS itself by default.
It doesn't make sense when you make a mechanic meant for what just amounts to RP purposes, and the mechanic in question comes around to suffer problems like inflation because someone realizes they can game the mechanic. That's defeating the purpose.
It's not even about the specific solution of crypto, it's poor foresight into the function of currency as a mechanic for social interaction. This same problem would happen if they'd used the Pippi currency had they set it up with the same kind of earning and spending parameters.
Hence too the point on control Pippi provides, as that's something you can alter directly post-case even.
Also hence my last point;
"They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do."
There is no stretch of the imagination being made here, these are some of the most basic principles to address. This wasn't "the only solution", it wasn't even a necessary solution.
EDIT: I'd also correct, due to the way NMS is made it actually could support an integrated currency mod similar to Pippi's. A lot of the communication done in the game is not authoritative to central server and much of the game runs client sided or peer to peer, you could add a currency to the game as a new item and let the mod flag other players with the mod over the current connected network so you know who you could trade with. You could even make it more authoritative than the game itself by having an external server issuing and tracking/validating it.
That way you'd have a new game-integrated currency to use, and it could then still have community and/or admin control to change and manage down the line in a hard manner.
This is also an additional reason why trying to leverage a currency as a mechanic with some form of traditional market rules doesn't work. Because mods exist that can alter just about any facet of the game (can even gain), on top of the base game itself already being easy to accrue just about any resource by default.
You'd have to use a fixed currency if you wanted to avoid the otherwise inevitable devaluation and inflation.
Having been prompted to go through the galactic Hub's marketplace offerings, it's fairly clear many of them use mods pretty prolifically too. There's shops based around specific mods.
Most value I can see in that is PC users being able to leverage that advantage within the Galactic Hub social/monetary system since the game allows cross platform play. Problem being, this opens issue with disparity in participants and creates a very clear direction for currency to funnel, makes for a social hierarchy instead of a social network.
It was a fun idea with poor implementation in a scenario where it simply is/was not necessary in the first place, simple as that.
This has to be one of the are other games that can do similar whether it's a barter system or they do use real money, but this is a novel way to do it that makes a lot of sense.
You're working too hard to come up with reasons why this solution doesn't work when in fact it's the only solution to accomplish what they wanted to do.
You give one example of a game that has a mod that can accomplish similar tasks, but that's not the solution.
It's creating a solution for something that doesn't need to exist, which is why it didn't exist.
If they wanted a 'reward currency' they could have done any variety of things that are simple to create and implement.
Being a mod or not is irrelevant, that's just the level of integration it has with the game in a direct sense. Not the case of does the currency exist as a mechanic and what control the participating users have. You can whinge about "this game can't use mods", but the fact is the same kind of currency could be setup similar to how they leverage the cryptocurrency. That is not a hurdle here (it's actually not a hurdle at all, NMS has tons of mods, it having live service elements is irrelevant).
What part of sharing a community on Reddit mandates a tangible currency? And I agree there are other games that can do similar with a barter system yes... like NMS itself by default.
It doesn't make sense when you make a mechanic meant for what just amounts to RP purposes, and the mechanic in question comes around to suffer problems like inflation because someone realizes they can game the mechanic. That's defeating the purpose.
It's not even about the specific solution of crypto, it's poor foresight into the function of currency as a mechanic for social interaction. This same problem would happen if they'd used the Pippi currency had they set it up with the same kind of earning and spending parameters.
Hence too the point on control Pippi provides, as that's something you can alter directly post-case even.
Also hence my last point;
"They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do."
There is no stretch of the imagination being made here, these are some of the most basic principles to address. This wasn't "the only solution", it wasn't even a necessary solution.
EDIT: I'd also correct, due to the way NMS is made it actually could support an integrated currency mod similar to Pippi's. A lot of the communication done in the game is not authoritative to central server and much of the game runs client sided or peer to peer, you could add a currency to the game as a new item and let the mod flag other players with the mod over the current connected network so you know who you could trade with. You could even make it more authoritative than the game itself by having an external server issuing and tracking/validating it.
That way you'd have a new game-integrated currency to use, and it could then still have community and/or admin control to change and manage down the line in a hard manner.
This is also an additional reason why trying to leverage a currency as a mechanic with some form of traditional market rules doesn't work. Because mods exist that can alter just about any facet of the game (can even gain), on top of the base game itself already being easy to accrue just about any resource by default.
You'd have to use a fixed currency if you wanted to avoid the otherwise inevitable devaluation and inflation.
You say it doesn't work. This article and the members of the hub prove it does. Without forcing a mod or making it complicated or having to run a special server.
Hey if it's easy, then you should do it.
I've made cryptotokens on testnets before many times, it's not hard to do and even testnets can integrate with APIs of all kinds without any issues.
You're making too much out of trying to get things "right" with the way you think the currency should be handled and yet, this is how it IS working.they seem fine with it. And it wasn't done without Blockchain, it actually used it effectively and freely.
You think a mod can do it better? Make the mod.
There's a reason people didn't. There's a reason people don't. There's a reason pippi has a post on the enjin forums. Blockchain is easily administered and easily created.
You don't need Blockchain you say? Well you don't need anything. You hate metal cars? Make a wood one. Hate fabric shirts. Wear plate armor. Just because something isn't needed doesn't mean you have to reinvent the wheel to make something work.
And tbh. It did need Blockchain. It was the easiest way to do it, and there is literally nothing else, not even "pippi" that would have been worth the effort to attempt.
You say it doesn't work. This article and the members of the hub prove it does. Without forcing a mod or making it complicated or having to run a special server.
Hey if it's easy, then you should do it.
I've made cryptotokens on testnets before many times, it's not hard to do and even testnets can integrate with APIs of all kinds without any issues.
You're making too much out of trying to get things "right" with the way you think the currency should be handled and yet, this is how it IS working.they seem fine with it. And it wasn't done without Blockchain, it actually used it effectively and freely.
You think a mod can do it better? Make the mod.
There's a reason people didn't. There's a reason people don't. There's a reason pippi has a post on the enjin forums. Blockchain is easily administered and easily created.
You don't need Blockchain you say? Well you don't need anything. You hate metal cars? Make a wood one. Hate fabric shirts. Wear plate armor. Just because something isn't needed doesn't mean you have to reinvent the wheel to make something work.
And tbh. It did need Blockchain. It was the easiest way to do it, and there is literally nothing else, not even "pippi" that would have been worth the effort to attempt.
Working in the context of it technically runs, sure.
Working in the context of it suffering inflation and direct bias in distribution of wealth thanks to exploitable mechanics, not so much.
And sure. I can set up some Javascript and make a web plugin to offer a customizable artificial currency. I do program you know, I can do more than compile other people's code and toy with toolkits.
Your "then do it" is just itself a petty swipe with no merit. Do something for a game I'm not actively participating in? You wanna pay me to do it, then sure. Otherwise this is just you taking swings out of what? Feeling slighted someone said this was overkill for RP and there were other options?
They seem fine with it because it's what they did and they live with it.
And you seem to continue to argue against a position not taken by me. You are the one that's harping on crypto, my responses only address that element in passing before making my own point. We can even look at the post you just responded to and see that my statement never levied anything against crypto/blockchain as the problem. Hell, you could use a cryptocurrency as part of my proposed solution!
How any times must I repeat to you that my problem isn't with crypto here?
"You don't need Blockchain you say? Well you don't need anything." was perhaps the closest you've gotten so far to understanding the point. Yes, they don't need anything, and again in fact not using anything would have likely been the better solution.
Have I not repeated this multiple times now;
"They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do."
They created a currency that they tied to a broad range of social interactions and tied it to earning methods that could be gamed, on top of player made markets that can exploit the game and mods for drawing profit into a specific subsection of the community.
What of that sounds like me criticizing crypto in particular? How has the fact I've been specific to say the type of currency they chose to use was not my concern somehow translated in your head to me being critical of that enough that it's all you harp on here?
Your agenda is getting in the way of your reason and making for dishonest arguments. Get over yourself for a moment and try to reassess the conversation. You clearly have some spillover rant going on here.
It sounds silly and is as stupid as NFT. Just like NFT, it only works as long as people play along. It's like couple of kids decided that leaves are money and the water is gasoline. So it works as along as kids play along- they use leaves to buy water. Water that everyone has access to it. But when there is kid who decides to just go home and get water, instead of using leaves to buy it. Then whole concept breaks down.
Hello travelers! There were so many interesting points and questions in this thread, and I love talking about this stuff, so I had to make an account. I'm the guy who came up with HubCoin and I'm hoping I can help explain some aspects of it. (I also can't figure out how to change my icon, so apologies for my generic appearance.)
First, thank you for everyone who left supportive comments! It's a happy thing when people can understand what we're doing and why. But I also understand people who are concerned or don't understand, as there's no question that nearly all examples of crypto-gaming are lame cashgrabs.
A lot of the questions seem to basically boil down to, "Why do this at all?" It's a fair question. The short answer is, a metagame currency is the only possible way to facilitate a metagame economy. I've been doing this for over 6 years and tried, and failed, to create a metagame economy with previous approaches.
There's no resource in NMS which is scarce, transferable, and unable to be gained by exploits like dupes. This means that there's no consistently desirable resource across the entire playerbase, which is essential for a currency. Late game players especially don't care about units or nanites.
You might then ask - if no resources are desirable enough to act as a unit of value, why create a metagame economy at all? The response to that is that you have to understand the three sectors of our economy -
Skill. These businesses provide services which cannot be provided by just any player. Examples might include artistic endeavors like Bytebeat, technology-based endeavors like save editing otherwise-unobtainable fauna or starships (save edited content is impossible for PS5 players to get on their own [yes, even at Space Stations, even with Difficulty Settings, even with exploits ] and requiring a $50 software license for PS4 players, and requiring some technical knowledge for everyone else), or game-based-skill endeavors like wiring up logic circuits in game.
Convenience. These businesses provide services which are tedious or time-consuming for the average player to obtain, especially without the use of exploits / cheats / difficulty settings. Examples mostly include various forms of in-game resources, but also include things like commissioning specific NMS wiki pages. This sector was impacted hard by Hello Games' decision to add "difficulty settings," which do indeed allow people to create resources from thin air. This is the so-called "inflation" mentioned in the article - this is the incorrect term to use, because M3tz is actually talking about vendors needing to sell their goods for a lower price to make a sale. That's the opposite of inflation. It's most accurate to regard the economic trend as a devaluation of the resources sold for convenience due to difficulty settings and competition between businesses, moreso than any change in valuation of HubCoin itself.
Roleplay. These businesses provide services which provide no inherent in-game benefit or resource, just a fun time. Examples might include restaurants (there's food in-game, but the benefits really don't justify bothering to obtain it), contraband sellers (again you can sell the contraband, but people buy it more as a roleplay element, "smoking some NipNip" and such). This sector of the economy is under-developed and something I always planned would require subsidies to prop up, but the GH Treasury Department has yet to figure out the details of those subsidies.
The commonality between all of these is that they can be viewed as paying for another player's time, using a token you earn by contributing your own time. (Although in some cases you're paying for the product as well, you can view that as paying a person for the time it takes them to create that product.) Tokenized player activity is the backbone of the entire concept; the only truly rare "resource" in NMS is player activity. That's ultimately what people are buying with HubCoin - whether it's rewarding people for completing a mission narrative you created, paying someone for a save edited fauna companion (which would cost PS4 players $50+ for save editing software to be able to make on their own, and entirely impossible for PS5), or paying someone for a unique piece of art like a custom Bytebeat or base statue, it's all just different forms of buying player activity. Ultimately it allows people to, indirectly, exchange a representative unit of their time and effort to create a metagame economy.
This could've been accomplished with something like a Discord bot rather than blockchain, but that would have a few drawbacks -
Reach. We operate across Reddit, Discord, the NMS Fandom Wiki, Mastodon, and YouTube. A coin limited to Discord would present additional headaches with distributing to non-Discord platforms; I haven't looked into it extensively, but I haven't seen any Discord bot where you can give it a spreadsheet and have it send that amount to every name on the list, which would be essential to match the scale of what we're currently doing with Coin Multisenders.
Needing to start from scratch, instead of benefiting from existing web3 features. Even if we could make a Discord (or other website-specific) currency work, it would be siloed on that website. This would make things like our Galactic Hub website metagame marketplace, which we're currently working on, impossible. We're already using a Discord-based marketplace in conjunction with HubCoin, and it's not ideal - it would be a negative to be stuck with that. And that's just our website - anyone could make a website/application/etc which accepts HubCoin, provided it had nothing to do with real-world currency. We can make use of existing web3 structures instead of needing to make a marketplace and ledger and financial system entirely from scratch. If we wanted to facilitate player-to-player transfers, we'd either need to facilitate it directly ourselves as middlemen requiring more time and effort from staff, or create the infrastructure to enable P2P transfers, again requiring more time and effort than just telling people to download Metamask.
To sort of summarize my response to "why Blockchain?", I would ask - "why not Blockchain?" I'm not aware of any other alternatives which would've allowed us to accomplish what we've accomplished, as easily as we did. The only argument against it which I can personally sympathize with is energy usage, but the Goerli Testnet uses Proof of Authority, not Proof of Work like Bitcoin. I have no exact figures, but with how that system works (no "mining," just a decentralized group of validators saying "okay that transaction looks real"), I imagine sending a HubCoin transaction would use less energy than streaming a Youtube video - or playing No Man's Sky for 5 or 10 minutes!
A singular currency ecosystem does not help that. At best it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with.
NMS being a shared online space, has different requirements that allows for a singular currency. The fact it's only one group using it extends that viability.
You are vastly overcomplicating the necessary mechanics of monopoly money for roleplay too by trying to swing that grey market stuff in there. In fact that is what I'd say made things go awry and enable the gamified inflation of the currency in the first place.
They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do.
I think some concerns here stem from misunderstandings about how the civilized space community functions (or I'm misunderstanding your concerns, which is also possible).
When you say, "it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with" - I'm not sure how people could be harmed by the goings-on of an economy they're taking no part in. It's not in-game so no in-game features are effected. It's very easy for anyone to ignore with no consequence, if that's their preferred approach.
Although it's only the Hub using it on the scale of a civilization-wide currency, it's also accessible to visitors from other civilization who are active in our civilization.
It's also important to realize that roleplay is a very small aspect of the Hub's economy. We're much more about tangible gameplay and metagame content, and the interaction between the game and the metagame.
It also sounds like M3tz was incorrect to call it inflation; in the article, he says, “Unfortunately, I think the value has plummeted. [...] It seems like to keep up, especially with resource sales, we have to keep our prices low to keep buyers coming.” Suppliers keeping their prices low isn't inflation - it's quite the opposite! Prices were driven down due to competition between businesses, and Hello Games enabling options which allow the majority of players to create resources out of thin air. Prices of skill-based resources, like save edited ships or save edited fauna, have remained pretty constant since their introduction. The economic trends didn't have much to do with HubCoin inherently or its features; it was just the free market at work, combined with changes to the context of that market brought about by changes to game features. It all worked exactly as it should imo.
As for overcomplicating it, I think the degree of its complication is perfectly congruent with the complicated nature of the Hub in general. I don't personally see any simpler way we could've accomplished the same thing. Creating HubCoin took about as much time as creating a social media profile. ApexFatality, one of our staff, worked hard on a back-end system to track our citizens activity across the multiple platforms we use. Now that automatically spits out activity values every month, we take those and plug them into a formula accounting for caps on activity / diminishing returns so the most active players don't take an insanely overwhelming amount of the money, plug those final values into a coin multisender, and click "Send." Nice and easy! And from the user's perspective, the initial signup can be a bit of a headache, but with over 250 people signed up compared to the ~500 registered Hub citizens, it can't be too bad. Once signup is over, it's just about the easiest thing in the world, probably comparable to a digital version of swiping your credit card in a machine.
500+ hours in and I hadn't heard of it or noticed anyone talking about it in game. Article makes it sounds interesting for those who use it. No desire to really get involved with it myself though.
That said, a player-to-player economy in NMS seems more about workarounds using the game mechanics. This workaround sounds interesting, but now I can't help but wonder what Hello Games might come up with, if anything, as they keep expanding the game.
I would looove to see Hello Games make HubCoin unnecessary, but as long as No Man's Sky saves your multiplayer inventory to your save rather than online servers, then cloud backups and USB backups would make any in-game currency infinitely exploitable.
Some people have also expressed that they enjoy HubCoin's separation from the game, so they can do things like bet on game events from their phone even while they aren't playing.
Generally, players don't value time another player puts into a game. In real life, people pay doctors for the time they've invested into learning medicine. Usually at a premium price. People hesitate to pay people for learning in a game. Especially so when 'learning' only equates to time played.
I disagree with the premise that people don't value time another player puts into a game; "Minecraft economy servers" have been a thing for years and years. Or, going back further and with a slightly weaker context, there's a reason people in this thread have been calling it "Monopoly money". This is no different. People are paying with currency which they earn in the context of the game. People pay doctors with real money; we strictly forbid anyone from paying for HubCoin with real money, so those two scenarios aren't comparable in my opinion.
That 'exploit' (working as implemented?) doesn't bother me as much as the fact that the only real reason to mine is to build things. If you're more interested in exploring than crafting, the entire game feels very shallow. There's only so many alien language pods that can teach a single word at a time to keep the interest going.
We reward exploration in various ways - you can get paid HubCoin for writing wiki pages, documenting your discoveries for other people to find. You can get paid for discovering especially rare and desirable fauna, like megafauna diplos or Greater Mushroom Beetles (I've played for over 2,000 hours and only found 1 GMB on my own). In some cases, people will post jobs where they're looking for planets, base locations, etc with specific criteria - you could fulfill those requests. Then once you have HubCoin, I imagine even your average explorer-who-doesn't-care-about-construction could enjoy things like save-edited fauna companions, special save-edited ships, or physical Hub merch.
EDIT: I'd also correct, due to the way NMS is made it actually could support an integrated currency mod similar to Pippi's. A lot of the communication done in the game is not authoritative to central server and much of the game runs client sided or peer to peer, you could add a currency to the game as a new item and let the mod flag other players with the mod over the current connected network so you know who you could trade with. You could even make it more authoritative than the game itself by having an external server issuing and tracking/validating it.
Mods don't work on XBox or Playstation. No Man's Sky is a crossplay game, we aren't PC-exclusive. We need a solution that works for all platforms.
A singular currency ecosystem does not help that. At best it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with.
NMS being a shared online space, has different requirements that allows for a singular currency. The fact it's only one group using it extends that viability.
You are vastly overcomplicating the necessary mechanics of monopoly money for roleplay too by trying to swing that grey market stuff in there. In fact that is what I'd say made things go awry and enable the gamified inflation of the currency in the first place.
They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do.
I think some concerns here stem from misunderstandings about how the civilized space community functions (or I'm misunderstanding your concerns, which is also possible).
When you say, "it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with" - I'm not sure how people could be harmed by the goings-on of an economy they're taking no part in. It's not in-game so no in-game features are effected. It's very easy for anyone to ignore with no consequence, if that's their preferred approach.
Although it's only the Hub using it on the scale of a civilization-wide currency, it's also accessible to visitors from other civilization who are active in our civilization.
It's also important to realize that roleplay is a very small aspect of the Hub's economy. We're much more about tangible gameplay and metagame content, and the interaction between the game and the metagame.
It also sounds like M3tz was incorrect to call it inflation; in the article, he says, “Unfortunately, I think the value has plummeted. [...] It seems like to keep up, especially with resource sales, we have to keep our prices low to keep buyers coming.” Suppliers keeping their prices low isn't inflation - it's quite the opposite! Prices were driven down due to competition between businesses, and Hello Games enabling options which allow the majority of players to create resources out of thin air. Prices of skill-based resources, like save edited ships or save edited fauna, have remained pretty constant since their introduction. The economic trends didn't have much to do with HubCoin inherently or its features; it was just the free market at work, combined with changes to the context of that market brought about by changes to game features. It all worked exactly as it should imo.
As for overcomplicating it, I think the degree of its complication is perfectly congruent with the complicated nature of the Hub in general. I don't personally see any simpler way we could've accomplished the same thing. Creating HubCoin took about as much time as creating a social media profile. ApexFatality, one of our staff, worked hard on a back-end system to track our citizens activity across the multiple platforms we use. Now that automatically spits out activity values every month, we take those and plug them into a formula accounting for caps on activity / diminishing returns so the most active players don't take an insanely overwhelming amount of the money, plug those final values into a coin multisender, and click "Send." Nice and easy! And from the user's perspective, the initial signup can be a bit of a headache, but with over 250 people signed up compared to the ~500 registered Hub citizens, it can't be too bad. Once signup is over, it's just about the easiest thing in the world, probably comparable to a digital version of swiping your credit card in a machine.
Case of different games and game structure.
The statement regarding multiple servers is on the subject of having a currency that is a standard across multiple disparate communities and has a shared value as a result.
This is a problem for a game like Conan Exiles, not NMS, because Conan Exiles has separate player communities interacting on isolated servers. The result would be that something happening in one community that might alter the value of a game-wide currency, would propagate into individual servers where the economy is not balanced for the consequences.
Hence Exiles needs a solution where a currency can be created and assigned per-server.
And yes I do see the problem of inflation is that game resources are inflated, which leads to currency devaluation.
The thing I say makes this overkill is that the implementation of social currency as you apply it could be handled even more simply by removing it as a component of player trade and instead, since you track player activity directly already, reward merits to people directly on services rendered which you already do in part any ways.
It reaches the same end goal without the step of having a layer of currency that is being distributed and traded between a variety of parties, still supports social interaction since it is what drives rewards, and focuses the transaction element into just reward redemption.
EDIT: I'd also correct, due to the way NMS is made it actually could support an integrated currency mod similar to Pippi's. A lot of the communication done in the game is not authoritative to central server and much of the game runs client sided or peer to peer, you could add a currency to the game as a new item and let the mod flag other players with the mod over the current connected network so you know who you could trade with. You could even make it more authoritative than the game itself by having an external server issuing and tracking/validating it.
Mods don't work on XBox or Playstation. No Man's Sky is a crossplay game, we aren't PC-exclusive. We need a solution that works for all platforms.
That would be why I make the point;
"Having been prompted to go through the galactic Hub's marketplace offerings, it's fairly clear many of them use mods pretty prolifically too. There's shops based around specific mods.
Most value I can see in that is PC users being able to leverage that advantage within the Galactic Hub social/monetary system since the game allows cross platform play. Problem being, this opens issue with disparity in participants and creates a very clear direction for currency to funnel, makes for a social hierarchy instead of a social network.
It was a fun idea with poor implementation in a scenario where it simply is/was not necessary in the first place, simple as that."
Not to be harsh on your project, but it's a different point of view on what it means to be on these platforms as I do not see it as a skill action/transaction to have access mod/edited content. It's an advantage certainly, which lends to a unique gain over the rest of the participating community. Gamifying that in the context of monetary based social transaction just doesn't end up sitting well, as compared to leaving it as a social transaction with the later reward based on service.
Kind of the point I made in last post regarding merit reward over financial trade.
A singular currency ecosystem does not help that. At best it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with.
NMS being a shared online space, has different requirements that allows for a singular currency. The fact it's only one group using it extends that viability.
You are vastly overcomplicating the necessary mechanics of monopoly money for roleplay too by trying to swing that grey market stuff in there. In fact that is what I'd say made things go awry and enable the gamified inflation of the currency in the first place.
They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do.
I think some concerns here stem from misunderstandings about how the civilized space community functions (or I'm misunderstanding your concerns, which is also possible).
When you say, "it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with" - I'm not sure how people could be harmed by the goings-on of an economy they're taking no part in. It's not in-game so no in-game features are effected. It's very easy for anyone to ignore with no consequence, if that's their preferred approach.
Although it's only the Hub using it on the scale of a civilization-wide currency, it's also accessible to visitors from other civilization who are active in our civilization.
It's also important to realize that roleplay is a very small aspect of the Hub's economy. We're much more about tangible gameplay and metagame content, and the interaction between the game and the metagame.
It also sounds like M3tz was incorrect to call it inflation; in the article, he says, “Unfortunately, I think the value has plummeted. [...] It seems like to keep up, especially with resource sales, we have to keep our prices low to keep buyers coming.” Suppliers keeping their prices low isn't inflation - it's quite the opposite! Prices were driven down due to competition between businesses, and Hello Games enabling options which allow the majority of players to create resources out of thin air. Prices of skill-based resources, like save edited ships or save edited fauna, have remained pretty constant since their introduction. The economic trends didn't have much to do with HubCoin inherently or its features; it was just the free market at work, combined with changes to the context of that market brought about by changes to game features. It all worked exactly as it should imo.
As for overcomplicating it, I think the degree of its complication is perfectly congruent with the complicated nature of the Hub in general. I don't personally see any simpler way we could've accomplished the same thing. Creating HubCoin took about as much time as creating a social media profile. ApexFatality, one of our staff, worked hard on a back-end system to track our citizens activity across the multiple platforms we use. Now that automatically spits out activity values every month, we take those and plug them into a formula accounting for caps on activity / diminishing returns so the most active players don't take an insanely overwhelming amount of the money, plug those final values into a coin multisender, and click "Send." Nice and easy! And from the user's perspective, the initial signup can be a bit of a headache, but with over 250 people signed up compared to the ~500 registered Hub citizens, it can't be too bad. Once signup is over, it's just about the easiest thing in the world, probably comparable to a digital version of swiping your credit card in a machine.
Case of different games and game structure.
The statement regarding multiple servers is on the subject of having a currency that is a standard across multiple disparate communities and has a shared value as a result.
This is a problem for a game like Conan Exiles, not NMS, because Conan Exiles has separate player communities interacting on isolated servers. The result would be that something happening in one community that might alter the value of a game-wide currency, would propagate into individual servers where the economy is not balanced for the consequences.
Hence Exiles needs a solution where a currency can be created and assigned per-server.
And yes I do see the problem of inflation is that game resources are inflated, which leads to currency devaluation.
The thing I say makes this overkill is that the implementation of social currency as you apply it could be handled even more simply by removing it as a component of player trade and instead, since you track player activity directly already, reward merits to people directly on services rendered which you already do in part any ways.
It reaches the same end goal without the step of having a layer of currency that is being distributed and traded between a variety of parties, still supports social interaction since it is what drives rewards, and focuses the transaction element into just reward redemption.
I agree a game-wide currency would be preferable than each community having its own currency, but before HubCoin, we had neither one! With web3 features it would be easy enough to create a No Man's Sky currency exchange if enough other civilizations adopted their own currencies. But right now, there's either been no interest in doing so, or they opt for easier (but imo, frankly inferior) approaches like Discord bots.
As for the reward redemption suggestion, that doesn't really create a civilization, which is the goal here. Where people can benefit from, reward, and purchase from each other, and bring their own unique concepts to the economy. Things like save edited ships and save edited fauna aren't provided by the Galactic Hub directly; they provide major value to HubCoin, but they're provided just by regular old individual interlopers. A reward redemption system would be less akin to a true economy, and closer to a Chuck E Cheese style casino, while also reducing the overall benefits offered by HubCoin. The GH staff don't have the capability to take over for all the businesses we have now, so if we hypothetically did so, our playerbase would suffer and lose functionality.
EDIT: I'd also correct, due to the way NMS is made it actually could support an integrated currency mod similar to Pippi's. A lot of the communication done in the game is not authoritative to central server and much of the game runs client sided or peer to peer, you could add a currency to the game as a new item and let the mod flag other players with the mod over the current connected network so you know who you could trade with. You could even make it more authoritative than the game itself by having an external server issuing and tracking/validating it.
Mods don't work on XBox or Playstation. No Man's Sky is a crossplay game, we aren't PC-exclusive. We need a solution that works for all platforms.
That would be why I make the point;
"Having been prompted to go through the galactic Hub's marketplace offerings, it's fairly clear many of them use mods pretty prolifically too. There's shops based around specific mods.
Most value I can see in that is PC users being able to leverage that advantage within the Galactic Hub social/monetary system since the game allows cross platform play. Problem being, this opens issue with disparity in participants and creates a very clear direction for currency to funnel, makes for a social hierarchy instead of a social network.
It was a fun idea with poor implementation in a scenario where it simply is/was not necessary in the first place, simple as that."
Not to be harsh on your project, but it's a different point of view on what it means to be on these platforms as I do not see it as a skill action/transaction to have access mod/edited content. It's an advantage certainly, which lends to a unique gain over the rest of the participating community. Gamifying that in the context of monetary based social transaction just doesn't end up sitting well, as compared to leaving it as a social transaction with the later reward based on service.
Kind of the point I made in last post regarding merit reward over financial trade.
Mods aren't really a major component of the Galactic Hub economy at all. I'm not sure what business you're referring to. There may be one or two but certainly no major players.
I disagree entirely that save editing isn't a skill. There are many PC players; there are comparatively very few save editors. It's not as simple as just owning a PC.
I personally view it as only a positive thing to give people access to content they would otherwise have no access to. Console players spend their time in the Hub to earn HubCoin. They effectively exchange a tokenized representation of their time / effort for the time it takes another player to save edit for them. Unless the ratio at which the customer's activity is valued is considerably disparate with the value of the save editor's time - which I have no quantified figures for, but I don't believe to be the case - then I disagree that it creates a hierarchy.
Even then that's an artificially-selective focus on the save edited content, ignoring the convenience aspects, artistic aspects, or non-PC-exclusive skill-related aspects which make up the rest of the economy. Or the admittedly-very-small-but-nonetheless-fun roleplay aspect.
There's also the "Certified Vanilla" aspect of our economy, our version of "Certified Organic." Something like 70% of respondents indicated they would prefer to shop at businesses which use no save edits or mods or exploits of any kind. For some areas of business, like save edited fauna companions, this is simply impossible. But for the areas of the economy for which CV is applicable, CV businesses are pretty universally preferred. Not only for the equal footing, but because they contribute more overall activity to the Galactic Hub than just cheating resources into existence. This helps prevent some of that potential disparity as well.
A singular currency ecosystem does not help that. At best it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with.
NMS being a shared online space, has different requirements that allows for a singular currency. The fact it's only one group using it extends that viability.
You are vastly overcomplicating the necessary mechanics of monopoly money for roleplay too by trying to swing that grey market stuff in there. In fact that is what I'd say made things go awry and enable the gamified inflation of the currency in the first place.
They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do.
I think some concerns here stem from misunderstandings about how the civilized space community functions (or I'm misunderstanding your concerns, which is also possible).
When you say, "it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with" - I'm not sure how people could be harmed by the goings-on of an economy they're taking no part in. It's not in-game so no in-game features are effected. It's very easy for anyone to ignore with no consequence, if that's their preferred approach.
Although it's only the Hub using it on the scale of a civilization-wide currency, it's also accessible to visitors from other civilization who are active in our civilization.
It's also important to realize that roleplay is a very small aspect of the Hub's economy. We're much more about tangible gameplay and metagame content, and the interaction between the game and the metagame.
It also sounds like M3tz was incorrect to call it inflation; in the article, he says, “Unfortunately, I think the value has plummeted. [...] It seems like to keep up, especially with resource sales, we have to keep our prices low to keep buyers coming.” Suppliers keeping their prices low isn't inflation - it's quite the opposite! Prices were driven down due to competition between businesses, and Hello Games enabling options which allow the majority of players to create resources out of thin air. Prices of skill-based resources, like save edited ships or save edited fauna, have remained pretty constant since their introduction. The economic trends didn't have much to do with HubCoin inherently or its features; it was just the free market at work, combined with changes to the context of that market brought about by changes to game features. It all worked exactly as it should imo.
Case of different games and game structure.
The statement regarding multiple servers is on the subject of having a currency that is a standard across multiple disparate communities and has a shared value as a result.
This is a problem for a game like Conan Exiles, not NMS, because Conan Exiles has separate player communities interacting on isolated servers. The result would be that something happening in one community that might alter the value of a game-wide currency, would propagate into individual servers where the economy is not balanced for the consequences.
Hence Exiles needs a solution where a currency can be created and assigned per-server.
And yes I do see the problem of inflation is that game resources are inflated, which leads to currency devaluation.
The thing I say makes this overkill is that the implementation of social currency as you apply it could be handled even more simply by removing it as a component of player trade and instead, since you track player activity directly already, reward merits to people directly on services rendered which you already do in part any ways.
It reaches the same end goal without the step of having a layer of currency that is being distributed and traded between a variety of parties, still supports social interaction since it is what drives rewards, and focuses the transaction element into just reward redemption.
I agree a game-wide currency would be preferable than each community having its own currency, but before HubCoin, we had neither one! With web3 features it would be easy enough to create a No Man's Sky currency exchange if enough other civilizations adopted their own currencies. But right now, there's either been no interest in doing so, or they opt for easier (but imo, frankly inferior) approaches like Discord bots.
As for the reward redemption suggestion, that doesn't really create a civilization, which is the goal here. Where people can benefit from, reward, and purchase from each other, and bring their own unique concepts to the economy. Things like save edited ships and save edited fauna aren't provided by the Galactic Hub directly; they provide major value to HubCoin, but they're provided just by regular old individual interlopers. A reward redemption system would be less akin to a true economy, and closer to a Chuck E Cheese style casino, while also reducing the overall benefits offered by HubCoin. The GH staff don't have the capability to take over for all the businesses we have now, so if we hypothetically did so, our playerbase would suffer and lose functionality.
Think we had a disconnect there as I was noting it'd actually be a problem for a game like Exiles.
I do get in the context of a unified game system where players share a single overall experience, a singular game-wide currency would work better.
Most like don't really have an interest because what you're describing is largely a roleplay feature, even if you don't think of it as such.
And civilization isn't defined by just it's economy. OR even more so, there's other forms of civilization and forms economy takes.
Star Trek for example would actually live close to my description. Starfleet and it's core worlds operate as a post-scarcity society. You still have cause to seek interaction with others since you can still benefit from what they may offer. Difference is that it exists as a meritocracy, rewarding excellence in service.
So it's more a matter of what you're trying to emulate there on a representative level.
And I don't see the suggestion as GH taking over all services, but focusing specifically on the services they offer as a reward system to the merited actions of the community, which includes then the services the community offers each other on a Smartian basis instead of a financial one.
I guess if you're not going for a Trek type situation then that's all well and good, I just don't see it as overall that efficient or great choice.
EDIT: I'd also correct, due to the way NMS is made it actually could support an integrated currency mod similar to Pippi's. A lot of the communication done in the game is not authoritative to central server and much of the game runs client sided or peer to peer, you could add a currency to the game as a new item and let the mod flag other players with the mod over the current connected network so you know who you could trade with. You could even make it more authoritative than the game itself by having an external server issuing and tracking/validating it.
Mods don't work on XBox or Playstation. No Man's Sky is a crossplay game, we aren't PC-exclusive. We need a solution that works for all platforms.
That would be why I make the point;
"Having been prompted to go through the galactic Hub's marketplace offerings, it's fairly clear many of them use mods pretty prolifically too. There's shops based around specific mods.
Most value I can see in that is PC users being able to leverage that advantage within the Galactic Hub social/monetary system since the game allows cross platform play. Problem being, this opens issue with disparity in participants and creates a very clear direction for currency to funnel, makes for a social hierarchy instead of a social network.
It was a fun idea with poor implementation in a scenario where it simply is/was not necessary in the first place, simple as that."
Not to be harsh on your project, but it's a different point of view on what it means to be on these platforms as I do not see it as a skill action/transaction to have access mod/edited content. It's an advantage certainly, which lends to a unique gain over the rest of the participating community. Gamifying that in the context of monetary based social transaction just doesn't end up sitting well, as compared to leaving it as a social transaction with the later reward based on service.
Kind of the point I made in last post regarding merit reward over financial trade.
Mods aren't really a major component of the Galactic Hub economy at all. I'm not sure what business you're referring to. There may be one or two but certainly no major players.
I disagree entirely that save editing isn't a skill. There are many PC players; there are comparatively very few save editors. It's not as simple as just owning a PC.
I personally view it as only a positive thing to give people access to content they would otherwise have no access to. Console players spend their time in the Hub to earn HubCoin. They effectively exchange a tokenized representation of their time / effort for the time it takes another player to save edit for them. Unless the ratio at which the customer's activity is valued is considerably disparate with the value of the save editor's time - which I have no quantified figures for, but I don't believe to be the case - then I disagree that it creates a hierarchy.
Even then that's an artificially-selective focus on the save edited content, ignoring the convenience aspects, artistic aspects, or non-PC-exclusive skill-related aspects which make up the rest of the economy. Or the admittedly-very-small-but-nonetheless-fun roleplay aspect.
There's also the "Certified Vanilla" aspect of our economy, our version of "Certified Organic." Something like 70% of respondents indicated they would prefer to shop at businesses which use no save edits or mods or exploits of any kind. For some areas of business, like save edited fauna companions, this is simply impossible. But for the areas of the economy for which CV is applicable, CV businesses are pretty universally preferred. Not only for the equal footing, but because they contribute more overall activity to the Galactic Hub than just cheating resources into existence. This helps prevent some of that potential disparity as well.
You say this, but in your last post and this one you comment on save edited contents value. I'm not sure how you personally class modding a game, but editing game content is modification.
And it does seem we view the case of what access to specific mods, tools, or otherwise the difference sin platforms provides. As well as base don the last post, a difference in perspective of driving goal.
The convenience aspect gets muddles since you can poll how much people would prefer something, but what's the numbers for who they're exchanging with most? Granted that even is rendered somewhat moot given what we both already know regarding the ease of access to materials even without modding/edits/etc. Certainly less if being super strict about game mode, but still not hard overall with established farms either.
Aside from that, I guess I just personally value meritocracy above economy as a motivational force. Difference of interest and consequently how that element would be set up, even if parallel end goals.
Think you benefit perhaps most from your professed numbers. You are a community of a few hundred people interacting with this currency, many less likely on a daily/regular basis.
You have to factor for scale and the greater proportion of personalities that comes with, if you talk about the function of a currency in broader application for a/the game.
I think it sounds fine for the goals and interests you have outlined, at the scale you operate. I still don't think it sounds good in any extended fashion.
@Uwakionna I do believe it's the most efficient and effective choice. Compare the NMS community at large, where you can ask for a custom save-edited fauna companion, and hope someone feels benevolent enough to give it to you that day, with the GH community, where you have a clear path to how to obtain a save-edited fauna companion at all times.
We operated more in that Star Trek context for the first 4 1/2 - 5 years of our existence. It absolutely works, because the NMS community is amazing. I just don't think it works as well, as consistently, or as quickly. Because ultimately, NMS has one resource that prevents it from fully meeting Star Trek's post-scarcity context - player time. People only have so much time to play, unlike Star Trek where they simply live in the otherwise-post-scarcity world, so those services which require players to dedicate their time will in turn always be scarce.
Your suggestion of a merit-reward-good-Samaritan system is entirely doable I think. And maybe an idea for you to base your own civilization on, if you're a No Man's Sky player. But for the Hub community, I think the HubCoin economy ultimately accomplishes something which is at least very similar, while also making it clear to everyone what they can expect from others and what is expected from them perhaps a bit moreso than a purely altruistic system.
I think it's also important to note that while it may not be purely altruistic, it's not set up to be a capitalist resource-accumulation system either (although some people may engage with it that way, and I don't think that's especially harmful since the system doesn't lend itself to exploitation - no one needs HubCoin to eat, or even to be a citizen). It's just meant to give value to peoples' time, allow that value to be exchanged, and reward people who participate in our civilization.
@Uwakionna I do believe it's the most efficient and effective choice. Compare the NMS community at large, where you can ask for a custom save-edited fauna companion, and hope someone feels benevolent enough to give it to you that day, with the GH community, where you have a clear path to how to obtain a save-edited fauna companion at all times.
We operated more in that Star Trek context for the first 4 1/2 - 5 years of our existence. It absolutely works, because the NMS community is amazing. I just don't think it works as well, as consistently, or as quickly. Because ultimately, NMS has one resource that prevents it from fully meeting Star Trek's post-scarcity context - player time. People only have so much time to play, unlike Star Trek where they simply live in the otherwise-post-scarcity world, so those services which require players to dedicate their time will in turn always be scarce.
Your suggestion of a merit-reward-good-Samaritan system is entirely doable I think. And maybe an idea for you to base your own civilization on, if you're a No Man's Sky player. But for the Hub community, I think the HubCoin economy ultimately accomplishes something which is at least very similar, while also making it clear to everyone what they can expect from others and what is expected from them perhaps a bit moreso than a purely altruistic system.
I think it's also important to note that while it may not be purely altruistic, it's not set up to be a capitalist resource-accumulation system either (although some people may engage with it that way, and I don't think that's especially harmful since the system doesn't lend itself to exploitation - no one needs HubCoin to eat, or even to be a citizen). It's just meant to give value to peoples' time, allow that value to be exchanged, and reward people who participate in our civilization.
Bit of what I meant back with pointing out your system was made to track a variety of player actions already, and the means that could provide incentive under the context of a meritocracy.
Did you try operating as a meritocracy with that kind of incentive program, or did that come delivered as a package developed with the currency? What gap in the processes may be there to consider?
I'm certainly less antagonistic of the concept in the scope you've applied it, since you've described it though. It fills gaps in rationale that was missing from the general research of the wiki and the not-quite-accurate article. While I don't think it's the best concept or implementation personally, and I have concerns about how it'd play out at a larger scale, I'm glad it works for you guys.
500+ hours in and I hadn't heard of it or noticed anyone talking about it in game. Article makes it sounds interesting for those who use it. No desire to really get involved with it myself though.
That said, a player-to-player economy in NMS seems more about workarounds using the game mechanics. This workaround sounds interesting, but now I can't help but wonder what Hello Games might come up with, if anything, as they keep expanding the game.
I would looove to see Hello Games make HubCoin unnecessary, but as long as No Man's Sky saves your multiplayer inventory to your save rather than online servers, then cloud backups and USB backups would make any in-game currency infinitely exploitable.
Some people have also expressed that they enjoy HubCoin's separation from the game, so they can do things like bet on game events from their phone even while they aren't playing.
Well, I'd argue that multiple people in this thread, each with hundreds of hours in the game, don't leverage it. That sort of already indicates that it is unnecessary, right? That's not to say people don't enjoy it. I don't use mods either, but others do. More power to them/you and glad you're doing something you enjoy.
As for the player-to-player economy being about workarounds: For example, being able to trade a ship. You need to sell it to an NPC first and then another player can buy it. For other items, in inventory, you can at least give to someone, but it's specifically not a trade (one-way transaction/no security). I don't think any third party currency (on chain or not) really solves/can solve for those mechanics.
All said, thanks for taking the time to explain your perspective, the intent, and additional use cases on it. It certainly filled in some blanks that I hadn't considered and got me thinking about it a bit differently. Wouldn't call myself a convert, but I can respect what you're doing and your reasoning for going with blockchain.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers. Do something wrong, no one forgets" -from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
500+ hours in and I hadn't heard of it or noticed anyone talking about it in game. Article makes it sounds interesting for those who use it. No desire to really get involved with it myself though.
That said, a player-to-player economy in NMS seems more about workarounds using the game mechanics. This workaround sounds interesting, but now I can't help but wonder what Hello Games might come up with, if anything, as they keep expanding the game.
I would looove to see Hello Games make HubCoin unnecessary, but as long as No Man's Sky saves your multiplayer inventory to your save rather than online servers, then cloud backups and USB backups would make any in-game currency infinitely exploitable.
Some people have also expressed that they enjoy HubCoin's separation from the game, so they can do things like bet on game events from their phone even while they aren't playing.
Well, I'd argue that multiple people in this thread, each with hundreds of hours in the game, don't leverage it. That sort of already indicates that it is unnecessary, right? That's not to say people don't enjoy it. I don't use mods either, but others do. More power to them/you and glad you're doing something you enjoy.
I think that's okay too, and in a way the point of why Hubcoin is so interesting here. Because it's not necessarily something that people have to use, but it's for those that want something different, and there's a way to do that, even if the majority of the players probably don't even know it exists. It's kind of like any community built event. It's not "necessary" but just having the possibility and drive to do it might be worth it for some people.
In some ways that's a lot of features of MMOs though too. I mean, I don't RP at all in any MMOs I play, so sometimes it's interesting when I see an article here about a certain RP server and the things they do. It's not something I know or ever care to join, but it's still cool to see.
Ultimately, as described it's something built as an extrinsic motivator to prompt social interaction within the community.
It's a fine goal in and of itself.
The problem as I perceive them is simply that framing it as a currency serves the motivation to earn through other community members. This works as long as you're within a small enough community that also fosters communal respect, be it for each other or for the platform/game itself.
However, it does not scale well. Oversight of a community becomes increasingly difficult as it grows, and in a scenario where it takes only a few to throw things out of whack it just becomes increasingly likely that it'll lean the way of many economies with majority of wealth migrating one direction.
It also is the case that the things valued within it are in one of two main categories.
1) PC modification of game content, which lends itself to the prior concern.
2) The skills services such as art, music, etc. The issue levied on the second end is that because this is done as an ecosystem for the game, those services are themselves provided at the cost to the creators. Yes, they are "paid" for their services, but they are inherently accepting payment that only serves them within the context of a game community, and largely for symbolic reasons. That puts a lot of reliance on the creators in the community to be willing to lose real profit on artificial.
It does create a bubble for them too, granted they are open about inducting others to their bubble, however it remains a difference from interacting with that one community, to interacting with the game as a whole.
And it does stand that it's use between players is largely symbolic. It exists so people can see a tangible change of something for a transaction, and only otherwise serves otherwise as a resource to accrue from others for personal rewards.
Which loops back to the first point that it's main purpose is as an extrinsic motivator to push for interaction, by it being the method in which you gain personal benefits via this resource.
This is mostly why I considered most of this is better served by no currency, as it stakes reward on what is under everything else, a competitive mechanic. Yes, it's used to foster one element of cooperative play, but so can other reward systems. The fact it's not the currency itself, but the data tracking that does most the heavy lifting on that end speaks to the point that the currency itself could be removed in favor of rewarding cooperative play directly instead.
Given that there is a clear RP intent of using the currency for a micro economy, I can see why they decided to use it. That doesn't exactly make it the optimal design though.
In the end they are free do do things as they want. It's their project and their community.
Comments
Looking into it, that's specifically a mod for server hosted games... And that's a really deep cut. It's not going to work in ...well.. ANY live service game like NMS...
Everyone says that there's so many options out there that can do it better than Blockchain. This isn't it.
Blockchain can create a custom token, distribute an airdrop at particular intervals, trade between any players regardless of server. Regardless of activity. For any items. In game or outside of the game. On gray markets. With scalable resources to monitor the economy, and its success and use of the currency.
The simple fact is, MOST gray markets, if not all... Use fiat to buy things like goods and services from other players because there's no simple infrastructure to do it out there, except.... Blockchain.
For Exiles, you need to cater to the per server requirements since each servers community and needs may be different.
A singular currency ecosystem does not help that. At best it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with.
NMS being a shared online space, has different requirements that allows for a singular currency. The fact it's only one group using it extends that viability.
You are vastly overcomplicating the necessary mechanics of monopoly money for roleplay too by trying to swing that grey market stuff in there. In fact that is what I'd say made things go awry and enable the gamified inflation of the currency in the first place.
They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do.
They might as well be touting fish using bicycles.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/You want to create a reward currency in a game that doesn't have it. What do you do?
You can create a mod where you're able... But you aren't able to in NMS.
You say it's overcomplicating things, but sharing a community on Reddit is what MOST games do, whether for functional or RP reasons. Gray markets are pretty much in every game whether you like it or not but the article extends a gray market that uses Blockchain that DOESNT take real money, and has no fees associated with it. There are other games that can do similar whether it's a barter system or they do use real money, but this is a novel way to do it that makes a lot of sense.
You're working too hard to come up with reasons why this solution doesn't work when in fact it's the only solution to accomplish what they wanted to do.
You give one example of a game that has a mod that can accomplish similar tasks, but that's not the solution.
If they wanted a 'reward currency' they could have done any variety of things that are simple to create and implement.
Being a mod or not is irrelevant, that's just the level of integration it has with the game in a direct sense. Not the case of does the currency exist as a mechanic and what control the participating users have. You can whinge about "this game can't use mods", but the fact is the same kind of currency could be setup similar to how they leverage the cryptocurrency. That is not a hurdle here (it's actually not a hurdle at all, NMS has tons of mods, it having live service elements is irrelevant).
What part of sharing a community on Reddit mandates a tangible currency? And I agree there are other games that can do similar with a barter system yes... like NMS itself by default.
It doesn't make sense when you make a mechanic meant for what just amounts to RP purposes, and the mechanic in question comes around to suffer problems like inflation because someone realizes they can game the mechanic. That's defeating the purpose.
It's not even about the specific solution of crypto, it's poor foresight into the function of currency as a mechanic for social interaction. This same problem would happen if they'd used the Pippi currency had they set it up with the same kind of earning and spending parameters.
Hence too the point on control Pippi provides, as that's something you can alter directly post-case even.
Also hence my last point;
"They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do."
There is no stretch of the imagination being made here, these are some of the most basic principles to address. This wasn't "the only solution", it wasn't even a necessary solution.
EDIT: I'd also correct, due to the way NMS is made it actually could support an integrated currency mod similar to Pippi's. A lot of the communication done in the game is not authoritative to central server and much of the game runs client sided or peer to peer, you could add a currency to the game as a new item and let the mod flag other players with the mod over the current connected network so you know who you could trade with. You could even make it more authoritative than the game itself by having an external server issuing and tracking/validating it.
That way you'd have a new game-integrated currency to use, and it could then still have community and/or admin control to change and manage down the line in a hard manner.
This is also an additional reason why trying to leverage a currency as a mechanic with some form of traditional market rules doesn't work. Because mods exist that can alter just about any facet of the game (can even gain), on top of the base game itself already being easy to accrue just about any resource by default.
You'd have to use a fixed currency if you wanted to avoid the otherwise inevitable devaluation and inflation.
Most value I can see in that is PC users being able to leverage that advantage within the Galactic Hub social/monetary system since the game allows cross platform play. Problem being, this opens issue with disparity in participants and creates a very clear direction for currency to funnel, makes for a social hierarchy instead of a social network.
It was a fun idea with poor implementation in a scenario where it simply is/was not necessary in the first place, simple as that.
Hey if it's easy, then you should do it.
I've made cryptotokens on testnets before many times, it's not hard to do and even testnets can integrate with APIs of all kinds without any issues.
You're making too much out of trying to get things "right" with the way you think the currency should be handled and yet, this is how it IS working.they seem fine with it. And it wasn't done without Blockchain, it actually used it effectively and freely.
You think a mod can do it better? Make the mod.
There's a reason people didn't. There's a reason people don't. There's a reason pippi has a post on the enjin forums. Blockchain is easily administered and easily created.
You don't need Blockchain you say? Well you don't need anything. You hate metal cars? Make a wood one. Hate fabric shirts. Wear plate armor. Just because something isn't needed doesn't mean you have to reinvent the wheel to make something work.
And tbh. It did need Blockchain. It was the easiest way to do it, and there is literally nothing else, not even "pippi" that would have been worth the effort to attempt.
Working in the context of it suffering inflation and direct bias in distribution of wealth thanks to exploitable mechanics, not so much.
And sure. I can set up some Javascript and make a web plugin to offer a customizable artificial currency. I do program you know, I can do more than compile other people's code and toy with toolkits.
Your "then do it" is just itself a petty swipe with no merit. Do something for a game I'm not actively participating in? You wanna pay me to do it, then sure. Otherwise this is just you taking swings out of what? Feeling slighted someone said this was overkill for RP and there were other options?
They seem fine with it because it's what they did and they live with it.
And you seem to continue to argue against a position not taken by me. You are the one that's harping on crypto, my responses only address that element in passing before making my own point. We can even look at the post you just responded to and see that my statement never levied anything against crypto/blockchain as the problem. Hell, you could use a cryptocurrency as part of my proposed solution!
How any times must I repeat to you that my problem isn't with crypto here?
"You don't need Blockchain you say? Well you don't need anything." was perhaps the closest you've gotten so far to understanding the point. Yes, they don't need anything, and again in fact not using anything would have likely been the better solution.
Have I not repeated this multiple times now;
"They likely would have been better served leaving it an entirely roleplay level construct instead of tangible, as many roleplay communities do."
They created a currency that they tied to a broad range of social interactions and tied it to earning methods that could be gamed, on top of player made markets that can exploit the game and mods for drawing profit into a specific subsection of the community.
What of that sounds like me criticizing crypto in particular? How has the fact I've been specific to say the type of currency they chose to use was not my concern somehow translated in your head to me being critical of that enough that it's all you harp on here?
Your agenda is getting in the way of your reason and making for dishonest arguments. Get over yourself for a moment and try to reassess the conversation. You clearly have some spillover rant going on here.
First, thank you for everyone who left supportive comments! It's a happy thing when people can understand what we're doing and why. But I also understand people who are concerned or don't understand, as there's no question that nearly all examples of crypto-gaming are lame cashgrabs.
A lot of the questions seem to basically boil down to, "Why do this at all?" It's a fair question. The short answer is, a metagame currency is the only possible way to facilitate a metagame economy. I've been doing this for over 6 years and tried, and failed, to create a metagame economy with previous approaches.
There's no resource in NMS which is scarce, transferable, and unable to be gained by exploits like dupes. This means that there's no consistently desirable resource across the entire playerbase, which is essential for a currency. Late game players especially don't care about units or nanites.
You might then ask - if no resources are desirable enough to act as a unit of value, why create a metagame economy at all? The response to that is that you have to understand the three sectors of our economy -
This could've been accomplished with something like a Discord bot rather than blockchain, but that would have a few drawbacks -
- Needing to start from scratch, instead of benefiting from existing web3 features. Even if we could make a Discord (or other website-specific) currency work, it would be siloed on that website. This would make things like our Galactic Hub website metagame marketplace, which we're currently working on, impossible. We're already using a Discord-based marketplace in conjunction with HubCoin, and it's not ideal - it would be a negative to be stuck with that. And that's just our website - anyone could make a website/application/etc which accepts HubCoin, provided it had nothing to do with real-world currency. We can make use of existing web3 structures instead of needing to make a marketplace and ledger and financial system entirely from scratch. If we wanted to facilitate player-to-player transfers, we'd either need to facilitate it directly ourselves as middlemen requiring more time and effort from staff, or create the infrastructure to enable P2P transfers, again requiring more time and effort than just telling people to download Metamask.
To sort of summarize my response to "why Blockchain?", I would ask - "why not Blockchain?" I'm not aware of any other alternatives which would've allowed us to accomplish what we've accomplished, as easily as we did. The only argument against it which I can personally sympathize with is energy usage, but the Goerli Testnet uses Proof of Authority, not Proof of Work like Bitcoin. I have no exact figures, but with how that system works (no "mining," just a decentralized group of validators saying "okay that transaction looks real"), I imagine sending a HubCoin transaction would use less energy than streaming a Youtube video - or playing No Man's Sky for 5 or 10 minutes!I think some concerns here stem from misunderstandings about how the civilized space community functions (or I'm misunderstanding your concerns, which is also possible).
When you say, "it will harm some servers to have a currency influenced by entire groups they never otherwise interact with" - I'm not sure how people could be harmed by the goings-on of an economy they're taking no part in. It's not in-game so no in-game features are effected. It's very easy for anyone to ignore with no consequence, if that's their preferred approach.
Although it's only the Hub using it on the scale of a civilization-wide currency, it's also accessible to visitors from other civilization who are active in our civilization.
It's also important to realize that roleplay is a very small aspect of the Hub's economy. We're much more about tangible gameplay and metagame content, and the interaction between the game and the metagame.
It also sounds like M3tz was incorrect to call it inflation; in the article, he says, “Unfortunately, I think the value has plummeted. [...] It seems like to keep up, especially with resource sales, we have to keep our prices low to keep buyers coming.” Suppliers keeping their prices low isn't inflation - it's quite the opposite! Prices were driven down due to competition between businesses, and Hello Games enabling options which allow the majority of players to create resources out of thin air. Prices of skill-based resources, like save edited ships or save edited fauna, have remained pretty constant since their introduction. The economic trends didn't have much to do with HubCoin inherently or its features; it was just the free market at work, combined with changes to the context of that market brought about by changes to game features. It all worked exactly as it should imo.
As for overcomplicating it, I think the degree of its complication is perfectly congruent with the complicated nature of the Hub in general. I don't personally see any simpler way we could've accomplished the same thing. Creating HubCoin took about as much time as creating a social media profile. ApexFatality, one of our staff, worked hard on a back-end system to track our citizens activity across the multiple platforms we use. Now that automatically spits out activity values every month, we take those and plug them into a formula accounting for caps on activity / diminishing returns so the most active players don't take an insanely overwhelming amount of the money, plug those final values into a coin multisender, and click "Send." Nice and easy! And from the user's perspective, the initial signup can be a bit of a headache, but with over 250 people signed up compared to the ~500 registered Hub citizens, it can't be too bad. Once signup is over, it's just about the easiest thing in the world, probably comparable to a digital version of swiping your credit card in a machine.
I would looove to see Hello Games make HubCoin unnecessary, but as long as No Man's Sky saves your multiplayer inventory to your save rather than online servers, then cloud backups and USB backups would make any in-game currency infinitely exploitable.
Some people have also expressed that they enjoy HubCoin's separation from the game, so they can do things like bet on game events from their phone even while they aren't playing.
I disagree with the premise that people don't value time another player puts into a game; "Minecraft economy servers" have been a thing for years and years. Or, going back further and with a slightly weaker context, there's a reason people in this thread have been calling it "Monopoly money". This is no different. People are paying with currency which they earn in the context of the game. People pay doctors with real money; we strictly forbid anyone from paying for HubCoin with real money, so those two scenarios aren't comparable in my opinion.
We reward exploration in various ways - you can get paid HubCoin for writing wiki pages, documenting your discoveries for other people to find. You can get paid for discovering especially rare and desirable fauna, like megafauna diplos or Greater Mushroom Beetles (I've played for over 2,000 hours and only found 1 GMB on my own). In some cases, people will post jobs where they're looking for planets, base locations, etc with specific criteria - you could fulfill those requests. Then once you have HubCoin, I imagine even your average explorer-who-doesn't-care-about-construction could enjoy things like save-edited fauna companions, special save-edited ships, or physical Hub merch.
Mods don't work on XBox or Playstation. No Man's Sky is a crossplay game, we aren't PC-exclusive. We need a solution that works for all platforms.
The statement regarding multiple servers is on the subject of having a currency that is a standard across multiple disparate communities and has a shared value as a result.
This is a problem for a game like Conan Exiles, not NMS, because Conan Exiles has separate player communities interacting on isolated servers. The result would be that something happening in one community that might alter the value of a game-wide currency, would propagate into individual servers where the economy is not balanced for the consequences.
Hence Exiles needs a solution where a currency can be created and assigned per-server.
And yes I do see the problem of inflation is that game resources are inflated, which leads to currency devaluation.
The thing I say makes this overkill is that the implementation of social currency as you apply it could be handled even more simply by removing it as a component of player trade and instead, since you track player activity directly already, reward merits to people directly on services rendered which you already do in part any ways.
It reaches the same end goal without the step of having a layer of currency that is being distributed and traded between a variety of parties, still supports social interaction since it is what drives rewards, and focuses the transaction element into just reward redemption.
"Having been prompted to go through the galactic Hub's marketplace offerings, it's fairly clear many of them use mods pretty prolifically too. There's shops based around specific mods.
Most value I can see in that is PC users being able to leverage that advantage within the Galactic Hub social/monetary system since the game allows cross platform play. Problem being, this opens issue with disparity in participants and creates a very clear direction for currency to funnel, makes for a social hierarchy instead of a social network.
It was a fun idea with poor implementation in a scenario where it simply is/was not necessary in the first place, simple as that."
Not to be harsh on your project, but it's a different point of view on what it means to be on these platforms as I do not see it as a skill action/transaction to have access mod/edited content. It's an advantage certainly, which lends to a unique gain over the rest of the participating community. Gamifying that in the context of monetary based social transaction just doesn't end up sitting well, as compared to leaving it as a social transaction with the later reward based on service.
Kind of the point I made in last post regarding merit reward over financial trade.
As for the reward redemption suggestion, that doesn't really create a civilization, which is the goal here. Where people can benefit from, reward, and purchase from each other, and bring their own unique concepts to the economy. Things like save edited ships and save edited fauna aren't provided by the Galactic Hub directly; they provide major value to HubCoin, but they're provided just by regular old individual interlopers. A reward redemption system would be less akin to a true economy, and closer to a Chuck E Cheese style casino, while also reducing the overall benefits offered by HubCoin. The GH staff don't have the capability to take over for all the businesses we have now, so if we hypothetically did so, our playerbase would suffer and lose functionality.
I disagree entirely that save editing isn't a skill. There are many PC players; there are comparatively very few save editors. It's not as simple as just owning a PC.
I personally view it as only a positive thing to give people access to content they would otherwise have no access to. Console players spend their time in the Hub to earn HubCoin. They effectively exchange a tokenized representation of their time / effort for the time it takes another player to save edit for them. Unless the ratio at which the customer's activity is valued is considerably disparate with the value of the save editor's time - which I have no quantified figures for, but I don't believe to be the case - then I disagree that it creates a hierarchy.
Even then that's an artificially-selective focus on the save edited content, ignoring the convenience aspects, artistic aspects, or non-PC-exclusive skill-related aspects which make up the rest of the economy. Or the admittedly-very-small-but-nonetheless-fun roleplay aspect.
There's also the "Certified Vanilla" aspect of our economy, our version of "Certified Organic." Something like 70% of respondents indicated they would prefer to shop at businesses which use no save edits or mods or exploits of any kind. For some areas of business, like save edited fauna companions, this is simply impossible. But for the areas of the economy for which CV is applicable, CV businesses are pretty universally preferred. Not only for the equal footing, but because they contribute more overall activity to the Galactic Hub than just cheating resources into existence. This helps prevent some of that potential disparity as well.
I do get in the context of a unified game system where players share a single overall experience, a singular game-wide currency would work better.
Most like don't really have an interest because what you're describing is largely a roleplay feature, even if you don't think of it as such.
And civilization isn't defined by just it's economy. OR even more so, there's other forms of civilization and forms economy takes.
Star Trek for example would actually live close to my description. Starfleet and it's core worlds operate as a post-scarcity society. You still have cause to seek interaction with others since you can still benefit from what they may offer. Difference is that it exists as a meritocracy, rewarding excellence in service.
So it's more a matter of what you're trying to emulate there on a representative level.
And I don't see the suggestion as GH taking over all services, but focusing specifically on the services they offer as a reward system to the merited actions of the community, which includes then the services the community offers each other on a Smartian basis instead of a financial one.
I guess if you're not going for a Trek type situation then that's all well and good, I just don't see it as overall that efficient or great choice.
And it does seem we view the case of what access to specific mods, tools, or otherwise the difference sin platforms provides. As well as base don the last post, a difference in perspective of driving goal.
The convenience aspect gets muddles since you can poll how much people would prefer something, but what's the numbers for who they're exchanging with most? Granted that even is rendered somewhat moot given what we both already know regarding the ease of access to materials even without modding/edits/etc. Certainly less if being super strict about game mode, but still not hard overall with established farms either.
Aside from that, I guess I just personally value meritocracy above economy as a motivational force. Difference of interest and consequently how that element would be set up, even if parallel end goals.
Think you benefit perhaps most from your professed numbers. You are a community of a few hundred people interacting with this currency, many less likely on a daily/regular basis.
You have to factor for scale and the greater proportion of personalities that comes with, if you talk about the function of a currency in broader application for a/the game.
I think it sounds fine for the goals and interests you have outlined, at the scale you operate. I still don't think it sounds good in any extended fashion.
We operated more in that Star Trek context for the first 4 1/2 - 5 years of our existence. It absolutely works, because the NMS community is amazing. I just don't think it works as well, as consistently, or as quickly. Because ultimately, NMS has one resource that prevents it from fully meeting Star Trek's post-scarcity context - player time. People only have so much time to play, unlike Star Trek where they simply live in the otherwise-post-scarcity world, so those services which require players to dedicate their time will in turn always be scarce.
Your suggestion of a merit-reward-good-Samaritan system is entirely doable I think. And maybe an idea for you to base your own civilization on, if you're a No Man's Sky player. But for the Hub community, I think the HubCoin economy ultimately accomplishes something which is at least very similar, while also making it clear to everyone what they can expect from others and what is expected from them perhaps a bit moreso than a purely altruistic system.
I think it's also important to note that while it may not be purely altruistic, it's not set up to be a capitalist resource-accumulation system either (although some people may engage with it that way, and I don't think that's especially harmful since the system doesn't lend itself to exploitation - no one needs HubCoin to eat, or even to be a citizen). It's just meant to give value to peoples' time, allow that value to be exchanged, and reward people who participate in our civilization.
Did you try operating as a meritocracy with that kind of incentive program, or did that come delivered as a package developed with the currency? What gap in the processes may be there to consider?
I'm certainly less antagonistic of the concept in the scope you've applied it, since you've described it though. It fills gaps in rationale that was missing from the general research of the wiki and the not-quite-accurate article. While I don't think it's the best concept or implementation personally, and I have concerns about how it'd play out at a larger scale, I'm glad it works for you guys.
Well, I'd argue that multiple people in this thread, each with hundreds of hours in the game, don't leverage it. That sort of already indicates that it is unnecessary, right? That's not to say people don't enjoy it. I don't use mods either, but others do. More power to them/you and glad you're doing something you enjoy.
As for the player-to-player economy being about workarounds: For example, being able to trade a ship. You need to sell it to an NPC first and then another player can buy it. For other items, in inventory, you can at least give to someone, but it's specifically not a trade (one-way transaction/no security). I don't think any third party currency (on chain or not) really solves/can solve for those mechanics.
All said, thanks for taking the time to explain your perspective, the intent, and additional use cases on it. It certainly filled in some blanks that I hadn't considered and got me thinking about it a bit differently. Wouldn't call myself a convert, but I can respect what you're doing and your reasoning for going with blockchain.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
In some ways that's a lot of features of MMOs though too. I mean, I don't RP at all in any MMOs I play, so sometimes it's interesting when I see an article here about a certain RP server and the things they do. It's not something I know or ever care to join, but it's still cool to see.
It's a fine goal in and of itself.
The problem as I perceive them is simply that framing it as a currency serves the motivation to earn through other community members. This works as long as you're within a small enough community that also fosters communal respect, be it for each other or for the platform/game itself.
However, it does not scale well. Oversight of a community becomes increasingly difficult as it grows, and in a scenario where it takes only a few to throw things out of whack it just becomes increasingly likely that it'll lean the way of many economies with majority of wealth migrating one direction.
It also is the case that the things valued within it are in one of two main categories.
1) PC modification of game content, which lends itself to the prior concern.
2) The skills services such as art, music, etc. The issue levied on the second end is that because this is done as an ecosystem for the game, those services are themselves provided at the cost to the creators. Yes, they are "paid" for their services, but they are inherently accepting payment that only serves them within the context of a game community, and largely for symbolic reasons. That puts a lot of reliance on the creators in the community to be willing to lose real profit on artificial.
It does create a bubble for them too, granted they are open about inducting others to their bubble, however it remains a difference from interacting with that one community, to interacting with the game as a whole.
And it does stand that it's use between players is largely symbolic. It exists so people can see a tangible change of something for a transaction, and only otherwise serves otherwise as a resource to accrue from others for personal rewards.
Which loops back to the first point that it's main purpose is as an extrinsic motivator to push for interaction, by it being the method in which you gain personal benefits via this resource.
This is mostly why I considered most of this is better served by no currency, as it stakes reward on what is under everything else, a competitive mechanic. Yes, it's used to foster one element of cooperative play, but so can other reward systems. The fact it's not the currency itself, but the data tracking that does most the heavy lifting on that end speaks to the point that the currency itself could be removed in favor of rewarding cooperative play directly instead.
Given that there is a clear RP intent of using the currency for a micro economy, I can see why they decided to use it. That doesn't exactly make it the optimal design though.
In the end they are free do do things as they want. It's their project and their community.