hey cronoc,
I'm pleased you've heard of Shattered World and find it inspiring and further glad you're integrating finance and banking into your game. Its an unfortunate oversight that most games fail to incorporate finance into their in-game economies. It would add a whole new dimension of player impacting the gameworld.
On the particular game mechanic. My primary misgivings about the entropy element was the risk that it would not only annoy players but suspension of belief could be jeopardized. Time horizons for rust in particular is just too long to believably occur in a game. Blades becoming dull and notched, termites eating wood, and food spoilage would convincingly occur within the timeframe of a game session. I
I hadn't realised you would include magic into the gameworld. Magical sabotage could bring forward the rate of entropy of goods and would have a debilitating effect on an economy. It could cause temporary resource shortages but in the long run stimulate production and economic activity. It would cause temporary inflation unless item production kept pase with the demand from the need to replace damaged items. Its definitely an exotic gamemechanic. I'd be interested to see how the concept develops.
Plages to save the World's economy
Ahhh, economics... I'm already hooked on your thread! One thing you're going to have to be aware of is that [inflation != growth] and [deflation != decline]. Though these things can correspond, correlation does not imply causation; nor does the lack thereof...
In a real economy, an increasing population has several profound effects:
However, theoretically, an increase in the size of the labor force will eventually result in increased production capacity. Increased production capacity, of course, leads to increased production... and production is how wealth is created. You want your game economy to grow over time (preferably at a realistic rate) and for its wealth (and its "virtual GDP") to increase. Players who work hard and play for a long time are going to want to be "rich" and accumulate vast amounts of financial and material resources, just as people do in the real world. Hording wealth is a natural human behavior, and people are going to want to horde things in-game.
You don't want to tamper too much with the self-regulatory nature of a virtual free-market economy (nor a real one, for that matter, but that's for another time and place). The "inflation" you're expecting in commodities/items/etc from growth of the player population is going to be offset by the increased demand. There's going to be more people consuming, breaking, destroying, eating and drinking, just as there are more people building, making, cooking, brewing, etc. If you're using a gold/silver coin system as the base currency of the game, which I recommend, make sure that it is either mined slowly or "pumped" into the game world statically at a plausible rate. If you allow players to use small amounts of real money to purchase huge quantities of game money, then you're effectively turning it into a fiat system -- and you can expect major problems, particularly with inflation and outrageous prices. An way to control this, however, is by setting the "price" of game money dynamically...by doing this you can maintain price stability, and easily accomplish the job that the Federal Reserve and other central banks were created for but have always failed to do. However, I recommend you stay away from this pseudo-fiat model of allowing players to purchase game money with real money. Instead, if you plan to "monetize" your game through micro-transactions then only make items, tools and other such things available to buy with real money. That way a player will not be able to just buy his money but will have to buy, say, a cattle farm and sell the cattle to make money. This will keep the economy much more stable, as money cannot be created from thin air (at least not directly).
While I think it would be cool if pests/plagues could damage farms and such, I think it would suck if items in your player inventory get eaten by bugs... What kind of bug eats a gold bracelet or sword anyway? Instead, try to make items wear out or break over time, and their monetary value should depreceate as this happens. What you get is not only more economic realism but stability...
In a real economy, an increasing population has several profound effects:
- Increase in size of labor force
- Increase in aggregate demand for commodities and services
- Increased consumption
However, theoretically, an increase in the size of the labor force will eventually result in increased production capacity. Increased production capacity, of course, leads to increased production... and production is how wealth is created. You want your game economy to grow over time (preferably at a realistic rate) and for its wealth (and its "virtual GDP") to increase. Players who work hard and play for a long time are going to want to be "rich" and accumulate vast amounts of financial and material resources, just as people do in the real world. Hording wealth is a natural human behavior, and people are going to want to horde things in-game.
You don't want to tamper too much with the self-regulatory nature of a virtual free-market economy (nor a real one, for that matter, but that's for another time and place). The "inflation" you're expecting in commodities/items/etc from growth of the player population is going to be offset by the increased demand. There's going to be more people consuming, breaking, destroying, eating and drinking, just as there are more people building, making, cooking, brewing, etc. If you're using a gold/silver coin system as the base currency of the game, which I recommend, make sure that it is either mined slowly or "pumped" into the game world statically at a plausible rate. If you allow players to use small amounts of real money to purchase huge quantities of game money, then you're effectively turning it into a fiat system -- and you can expect major problems, particularly with inflation and outrageous prices. An way to control this, however, is by setting the "price" of game money dynamically...by doing this you can maintain price stability, and easily accomplish the job that the Federal Reserve and other central banks were created for but have always failed to do. However, I recommend you stay away from this pseudo-fiat model of allowing players to purchase game money with real money. Instead, if you plan to "monetize" your game through micro-transactions then only make items, tools and other such things available to buy with real money. That way a player will not be able to just buy his money but will have to buy, say, a cattle farm and sell the cattle to make money. This will keep the economy much more stable, as money cannot be created from thin air (at least not directly).
While I think it would be cool if pests/plagues could damage farms and such, I think it would suck if items in your player inventory get eaten by bugs... What kind of bug eats a gold bracelet or sword anyway? Instead, try to make items wear out or break over time, and their monetary value should depreceate as this happens. What you get is not only more economic realism but stability...
As far as the "how to get items out of the economy" thing goes, perhaps gear will gradually deteriorate through use and can be repaired by cannibalizing other items like in Fallout 3 and New Vegas? Then you can have it set up so that alot of the stuff people get from defeating enemies are half-broken gear that can be stripped down for parts or need to be repaired with more items. Basically, players get a wider variety of loot but its often in poor condition so they strip the parts from the bad ones to repair the good ones.
Low-level items could then see use as spare parts to repair the better items, this lets players automatically get rid of their old obsolete gear when they outgrow them and perhaps new players can sell their low level gear to higher level players knowing they can see use to repair stuff with.
Also, some items could just spoil naturally. Like maybe health potions have an expiration date or food spoils after a while (though the spoiled items might be able to see use in some other way... like expired health potions can be emptied to make empty bottles to make other potions with... or the liquid used to make poisons. While expired food can be composted or fed to various creatures). You could also include ice boxes for players to put their stuff in that ensure their items never go sour.
Hmm... perhaps work that into the game so that potions or items with an expiration date are simple never (or rarely) found as loot (no finding a 1,000 year old sandwich in a crypt and have it still be good). Other things like animal meat could be harvested during the raid but those have an expiration date on them. Things like health potions are either crafted in civilized areas or might be found in ice boxes or other cold areas where the 'enemy' keeps them. I can imagine an ice-themed location could be attractive to players if it turns out its the only area in the game where normally expirable items can be found laying around.
Low-level items could then see use as spare parts to repair the better items, this lets players automatically get rid of their old obsolete gear when they outgrow them and perhaps new players can sell their low level gear to higher level players knowing they can see use to repair stuff with.
Also, some items could just spoil naturally. Like maybe health potions have an expiration date or food spoils after a while (though the spoiled items might be able to see use in some other way... like expired health potions can be emptied to make empty bottles to make other potions with... or the liquid used to make poisons. While expired food can be composted or fed to various creatures). You could also include ice boxes for players to put their stuff in that ensure their items never go sour.
Hmm... perhaps work that into the game so that potions or items with an expiration date are simple never (or rarely) found as loot (no finding a 1,000 year old sandwich in a crypt and have it still be good). Other things like animal meat could be harvested during the raid but those have an expiration date on them. Things like health potions are either crafted in civilized areas or might be found in ice boxes or other cold areas where the 'enemy' keeps them. I can imagine an ice-themed location could be attractive to players if it turns out its the only area in the game where normally expirable items can be found laying around.
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