Quote:Original post by trapdoor
I tried looking up how game Economy works. I'm thinking in a MMO sense. If someone has a few links on where to get info or knows the basics of how the Economy works, that would be nice. I would like to see an MMO where very very few people have a lot of gold in the end, so much that they don't even use any of it any more. But again, that the majority of people, even a minority of people don't live in virtual poverty. Money has to go somewhere and come from somewhere. Having items in the world cannot be infinite as the market would get saturated with too many.
Asside from this, I'm still unsure what makes a good economy or what a good market / auction looks like.
1. define the ceiling prices
You have to define the ceiling prices of either the finished goods or the raw material/semi-products. For example,in Lineage II the ceiling of items are defined by the NPC shop prices. The ceiling prices are carefully worked out by evaluating the pattern of money gain in game. Since lineage2 lacks money sinks, the prices of items grow exponentially as char leveling up.
The ceiling prices give player market a reference or framework for the economy to roll on, as prices of key items are already defined by npc shopes, while players are unable to sell those items with higher prices (unless there are geographical factors).
A crafter has the option to purchase raw materials from npc shops (once he decides that finish goods are profitable even the raw materials are from shops, or the game lacks raw materials), or to purchase from other players or to gather the raw materials by themselves. Anyway, the shop prices set the items' highest prices for either the raw materials, or semi-finished goods or finished goods. These shop prices are carefully designed, calculated according to money gain pattern.
Now, if you want a fully player driven market, you only set the prices for raw mats and semi-products and leave the finished good prices undefined (defined by players themselves).
2. define money gain pattern
This can be truly complicated. And the good or bad of a game economy will rely on this.
Money gains are usually from mob drops, selling of raw mats, semi-products, finished goods, properties, rares, from mini-grind treadmills (such as farming).
You can tell that when main money gain is from mobs while items are unbreakable (or almost unbreakable), players will yell that the economy is bad. Yet the more important point is that they'll keep playing. So a game bad economy can still be a good/fun game, such as UO.
So in order just to make the economy "good", you can reduce the money from mob drops and make the player gears breakable (money sink).
3. customer satisfaction
The problem is, it's difficult to maintain players' satisfaction once mob drops are reduced and items are breakable. So the key point becomes you are going to define an economy where mob drops are reduced, items are breakable while fun is still reserved.
One of the main goals is to make crafting fun. The second is to make the money sinks unnoticable to players, ultimately player majority should be hanging in a status that they are not rich, but they are satisfactory.
4. magic combination
To work out a magic relationship between char development path and item demands, subsequently money demands. A magic relationship between what classes can farm what kinds of raw materials, can craft what kinds of semi-products and what kinds finished goods. And carefully work out the inter-class dependences while reserving customer satisfactions.
For example, you can find a niche for soloers. Soloers are expected to be less communicative with others. They may like pvp and/or soloable classes with high DD. So soloers may best fit for classes like rogues, assasins, warriors, dual-wielders and etc. So they can be assigned the job of raw mat. gathering. They are expected to spend more time on doing rinse-repeat grinding and rinse-repeat raw mat. gathering.
So the main money gain for classes like rogues, assasins...etc. is to sell raw mats. This is a result of the time frame calculation of various types of players, the more the players are in grouping, the better they are the crafters of complicated items which requires the purchasing of cheap materials from other players. Of course, you dont need to tell the players that this is so, you just silently include this factor into your design.
Thou the main class income is defined, there are still side imcomes. Say, even for the soloers, they can craft certain items unique to their classes. For instance, warriors and dual wielders can craft gaunlets, rogues and assassins can craft leather boots. While other classes will not be able to produce gaunlets and boots as efficient and as good as the soloers.
Say, tanks are expected to be the social type players, so you can make them blacksmiths (main income) to craft complicated weapons and armors (but not gaunlets and boots).
5. define the item components
Items such as armours and weapons are made up of a mass-production stopper, raw mats and semi-products can be self-gathered, rat mats/semi-products must rely on other classes.
The stopper is the raw mats exclusively or almost exclusively sold by npcs, alternatively as rare mob drops. For example, if a sword can be sold to npc shops with a price of 100 golds, made 80 gold as the stopper. Which means, the player who makes such a sword need to by 80 gold of raw mats from npcs shops, 10 golds from self-gathered raw mats and self-made semi-goods (the making of semi-products follows exactly this same rule), another 7~15 golds for purchasing raw mat/semi-goods from other players.
The 80 gold acts as a stopper for mass-production and thus a stabilizer for defining the price of the final products. Say, if usually a lvl50 player has 1000 gold as flowing cash, he can make 50 such swords (20 gold each) without the stopper (in the hope that several of them are high quality swords). While with the stopper, they can only craft 10 swords (100gold each) with less chance of getting a uber one, then they have to wait for the products to sell in order to get the cash back. This prolongs the crafting cycle and avoids too much uber items flooding the market.
The next is to carefully define how the players can gain money (and lose money) on crafting. Yet it's fun even when they lose money on it once and for awhile.
For example, armours such as platemails are expected to breat at a rate abit less than swords, as the frequency of hitting mobs must be less than being hit by the mobs. So crafters will lose abit in crafting platemails when selling to npcs, they lose money on it till a high quality one is made and sold to the player market. Say the lowest cost of making a platmail 160 gold, it sells to npc at 150gold. But once a high quality one is made, it can be sold to the player market at 300~20000up golds depending on how uber the gear is after the process of crafting, enhancing and customizing.
6. The social aspect
Simple, if it's group friendly game, average players will have less time on crafting as grouping is fun. On the other hand, in a less group friendly or forced grouping game, players may pay more attention on the fun of crafting.
You have to evaluate the time the various types of players may involved in crafting to establish the crafting formula correctly for the possibility/chances of producing the uber items.
As a rule of thumb, hardcore players will most likely take up the line of play style of high damage output and pvp classes. First, no matter how they are detered by the game mechanics, they will still be the richest group of players, so you need to sink more money from them. Second, as they are gaunlet and boot crafters, thus gaunlet and boot crafting will be designed to be much less profitable, raw mat gather will guarrantee their survival (and rich if they are willing to invest time on it) thou.
Since they dont rely on crafting to make money while they may craft gaunlets and boots occationally especially requested by other players, they make them to make friends. Gaunlets and boots are thus relatively less breakable in order to avoid the creating of high demands in the player market.
As they need STR, str is thus the most expensive stats in the game. For example, a +10str sword is worth 100gold, a +14str sword may cost 800gold while a +17str sword may cost 2000up gold. That is, the damage output efficiency may go in a linear way (pve/pvp damage design), yet the str price may go exponentially (rate of uber gear production). Even so, the hardcore players will demand the most uber gear set with +17str.
STR thus sinks the money from the richest group of players, ususally, they are hardcore players with tons of time, and alone.
...........there are more, but i am tired of typing. This is actually the design of my current game. Where the economy is good, with not much inflation, crafting is truly fun. Player majority are not rich but it's not a burden to survive. Players are quite willing to spend money and feel happy to remain "poor".
[Edited by - Hawkins8 on May 25, 2006 1:24:37 AM]
