Crafting

[Diggles]

I don't know how you can make it real without making it more complex. Someone or some process would have to actually print money in the game and somehow manage it in a real world fashion. It would certainly add complexity to the design if not necessarily in a way the player sees.

e.g., you go kill some hobgoblins and they drop gems and you take the gems back to town and sell them for 23 Kinglets each, and those Kinglets didn't just appear out of nowhere but rather, the NPC vendor had a finite supply of them which he got through the usual routes and somewhere there is actually a central government manufacturing Kinglets in addition to collecting taxes and redistributing wealth.

And then if you're talking about a factional game, who is the central authority that prints Kinglets? Or would every faction develop its own money?


It's easier to just have money fountains and money sinks...

The vendors could work just like some of the trade/market features in RTS's. The more an item is sold, the lower the demand/price goes down. The rarer an object the higher the value will be.

Ie...if I trade in too much wood, the supply is high and demand goes down, therefore the price starts going down.

Eve does this well and it would somewhat tie into Vllads world were everything has to be made. Limit how much the vendors can do and have the community take care of the rest.

[Kakarat]

How about this 'central bank' idea and 'lending' idea combined. It wouldn't be a loan, but go ahead and implement real life money for in game money. Limit the 'lending' and the amount of times someone can do it. And just make the gold farmers go away with your own system implemented.

[Dustie]

How about this 'central bank' idea and 'lending' idea combined. It wouldn't be a loan, but go ahead and implement real life money for in game money. Limit the 'lending' and the amount of times someone can do it. And just make the gold farmers go away with your own system implemented.

While I would love an in-game lending system, I think most people would not want the hassle.

If a game did have it though, I would suggest that it allow you to garnish wages of debtors, have them thrown in jail, and or have them killed for not repaying loans (in game of course). That would be great.

[Hoofhurr]

I'd hate having to deal with lending and interest rates in a mmog. If that stuff is so much fun why bother with gaming at all?

[Vllad]

I think you guys are missing the point.

I understand what Diggles is saying and in the real world he is correct but in an MMO he isn't. You need to create a game that slows down transactions not speed them up.

Let me explain.

If you don't have gold in the game the players will work it out themselves what they will use as currency. It won't neccessarily be a straight barter system where you trade item for item. While it could be at times eventually the players will start using something to try and speed up the transactions. Raw goods, production hours and/or something else.

It is in our nature to make it easier and like Diggles said we always try to find an easier way to play. The point is to let the server decide what that is. That is how you eliminate gold farmers and create a real economy. Let the players and/or the server decide what there currency is.

By letting the players do it that means the currency will evolve and change. That tempers the farmers and most importantly creates PVP.

Gold is bad for PVP. The minute you create money in the game you have already destroyed the ability to pvp over it.

What would you rather have, more raunchy mean pvp or more gold with faster transations? By slowing down the transactions you create more meaningful PVP by creating a reason to maintain or capture resourses. That becomes your currency.


Put it in the hands of the players, they will fix your problem for you and it will help the pvp. Quit trying to solve this problem via the game mechanics. In this case being a burden is actually a good thing.


Vllad

[Snowreap]

Gold is bad for PVP. The minute you create money in the game you have already destroyed the ability to pvp over it.

there's nothing wrong with having money in a game, the problem arises when money is made safe from pvp. just don't do that, and you should be fine.

first, if you die you should drop money (if you have any). the person (or group) who killed you should be able to loot your corpse and take your money (and selected other items as well). if you want your money back you'll have to (somehow) get it back from them.

second, there should be no way to make your money safe from pvp without at the same time making it unusable. so for example you can deposit your money in a bank for safekeeping, but you wouldn't be able to make use of it while it's there. if you want to spend it you'll need to withdraw it, and thereby make it vulnerable to loss.

third, there should be no way to move money from one place to another without making it vulnerable to loss (or taxation). so you shouldn't be able to deposit money in one town's bank then withdraw it from another town's bank without paying a very hefty "funds transfer fee" or carrying it from one bank to the other yourself.

if your game has town guards then you need to charge players extra for conducting business under their protection. either require them to see the local tax collector and thereby make themselves a "citizen" who can call on the town guards for aid, or enact an automatic "transfer tax" that siphons a bit of gold from both buyer and seller anytime an item is traded (less realistic, but more convenient).

-ken

[Hoofhurr]

Hah can you imagine having to transfer funds by hand? The old days of EQ are missed in this regard.

[Slamz]

I think that might be frustrating for the casual gamer.

It's one thing if you live and breath the gaming world so that you have a pretty good understanding of how much your 25 oak logs and 8 iron ore rocks are worth. When you don't play the game or follow the market religiously it would be pretty confusing trying to figure out how to get rid of your 8 iron ore rocks in order to obtain the basil leaves you want, if there was no fixed currency. You might have to spend serious time at an auction house trying to turn your 8 iron ore into 12 glass bottles, which you then exchange for 7 bags of coal, which you then use to purchase your basil leaves, all because there was nobody trading basil leaves directly for iron ore rocks (and also nobody directly taking iron ore rocks in exchange for bags of coal...)

Inventing a currency simply makes these transactions less troublesome for the gamer. Without much understanding of the economy you can turn your iron ore rocks into gold coins and then exchange those gold coins for the basil leaves.


Then the only question is "how do gold coins enter and leave the system".


I agree that if you didn't have a currency, players would have to invent one, but keeping up with what the current currency is might not be easy or obvious to your average moron gamer. I'm also not convinced that in the end, you've improved anything. You'd still have oak logs entering and leaving the system, just like gold coins would have, with the main end difference being that new players have no idea what the currency is.

[Vllad]

I think that might be frustrating for the casual gamer.

On the surface I agree it may appear that way because todays games are lazy but in the long a non currency unit is better for the casual gamer.

In games today casual gamers don't play enough to compete for the cash to make big purchases. I know, in Wow i never had enough cash. The casual gamers have to purchase cash from farmers.

Remove gold and the casual gamer is always on par. Since the currency is player driven there is a better chance that a casual gamer will be able to obtain what he needs to purchase an item vs. having to rely on currency.

Lets take your 25 log example:

Lets look at what an AH would look like in a non currency enviorment.

You run up to the AH and you see a Sword of God up for sale for 500 iron ingots. If you put up the ingots the transaction is completed and you get the sword. However we also give the buyers the option to put up counter offers that are sent to the seller.

The seller of the Sword of God logs on and checks the AH. One person put up an offer of 300 logs and another put up an offer of 100 silver ingots and the last put up an offer of Iron Boots of God.

The seller of the Sword of God can then select one of the offers given to him or cancel the offers, send counter offers or adjust his own request for 500 iron ingots to something else.

The casual gamer has a better chance of possibly offering something the original sellers may need in a non currency world then he would in a currency world. Casual gamers have only a limited time to play, however in a non currency world at least the casual gamer can optimize his gaming time for fun and still compete in the market.

Currency games remove the ability for the casual gamer to compete, especially when the primary goal of the game is to pvp.


Vllad

[Dustie]

Vllad, this is not the best idea you've ever had.

[Slamz]

In games today casual gamers don't play enough to compete for the cash to make big purchases. I know, in Wow i never had enough cash. The casual gamers have to purchase cash from farmers.

That's not really a valid example though, because the big ticket items (like mounts) were purchased from NPCs. You didn't have enough cash because Blizzard intentionally designed it so that you wouldn't. They set the cost of a mount to be something that most people would not naturally have at that level.

That certainly highlights a problem with taking resources (be it logs or gold) out of a system, though -- if you don't take it out fast enough, you get inflation. If you try to take it out too fast, players end up not being able to afford the things they feel they need to continue playing.

Under this new system, your mount might simply cost 5000 logs, which you still might not have, so we haven't really solved anything there one way or another.



The bartering example is interesting, though. Maybe the system would allow you to put up multiple offers.

Like the guy logs in and see nobody has offered him what he asked for in exchange for his Sword of God, but he sees:

Jimbo - 300 logs - Y/N
Slim - 100 silver ingots - Y/N
Frank - Iron Boots of God - Y/N

In fact, Jimbo actually has entered several offers in sequence:
300 logs
400 logs
50 beef
500 logs
200 beef
100 beef + 300 logs

When the seller hits "N", he gets to see the next offer (he has no idea if there is another offer, so he's encouraged to say "Y" to the one that fits his desires). This would allow the casual player to "barter" similar to real time, with, in this case, 500 logs and 200 beef being held in escrow to account for all possible deals.


Still, I'm not sure what we're improving here. We could just as easily do the same barter system with gold as a common exchange base instead of a mishmash of items.

[Vllad]

Vllad, this is not the best idea you've ever had.

Hah,

Probably not but at least I am thinking outside of the box. You have to move away from past examples and take some chances if you want to create the next great game.

The next great game we play will have aspects that you never thought of or thought would work.


Vllad

[Dustie]

Vllad, this is not the best idea you've ever had.

Hah,

Probably not but at least I am thinking outside of the box. You have to move away from past examples and take some chances if you want to create the next great game.

The next great game we play will have aspects that you never thought of or thought would work.


Vllad

You're right, you're right -- I will keep an open mind.

[Vllad]

Still, I'm not sure what we're improving here. We could just as easily do the same barter system with gold as a common exchange base instead of a mishmash of items.

The difference is currency is always secure whether you follow Snow's idea's or not. Currency never has to be carried more then 2 feet from a bank. Plus it is to easy to turn items into cash so cash is secure even if dropped while killed in pvp. I still go back to my body and loot the items in my inventory and sell it for cash. There is also no real way to control inflation with out changing currency.

That is why currency is bad for pvp.

With a barter system the goods have to be farmed out in the fontier. They have to be dragged back to a place to be refined. The refinement locations are attackable so still at risk. Players can't hide raw goods. They will always be able to hide currency.

If the casual player isn't in the mood to go picking flowers then he should go where the flowers are and kill the players picking the flowers. They drop all of there raw goods when killed and whaa laaa. He now (if he gets back a live) brings those raw goods back for trade. For one hour of PVP the casual player can collect more goods by raiding then the people doing the picking.

You can't do this with currency because you lose the danger during the transition from goods to currency. Well... unless you want to put the banks in the middle of the frontier.


Vllad

[Dustie]

You essentially want to make sure that PvP can insert itself into the process from resource gathering to production of game items to sale of game items. Isn't it enough to simply allow the resource control and retrieval portion to be the main focus area for that PvP insertion?

[Slamz]

With a barter system the goods have to be farmed out in the fontier. They have to be dragged back to a place to be refined. The refinement locations are attackable so still at risk. Players can't hide raw goods. They will always be able to hide currency.

There's no reason you couldn't just make currency behave like a raw good.

So you go out and farm 400 logs and get jumped on your way back to town and you lose the logs.
How is this different than going out to farm 400 gold coins, provided you also drop them when you die?

You stack the logs in your warehouse and enemies can destroy the warehouse and steal or destroy your logs.
How is this different than storing gold in your bank and then letting enemies sack the bank to steal or destroy the contents?

If the casual player isn't in the mood to go picking flowers then he should go where the flowers are and kill the players picking the flowers. They drop all of there raw goods when killed and whaa laaa.

Or, with currency, if you want flowers, you could also kill the guy mining iron ore, or the guy skinning wolves or the guy chopping trees, steal whatever they drop, sell it for gold coins, then use the coins to buy the flowers.

All the currency really does is set a global common item whose only purpose is to help people perform exchanges. There's no reason it has to be any more secure than any other resource.



But I am starting to see some value in having currency be more "real".

e.g., suppose NPCs never drop gold. It is never generated in this fashion. If you buy an item from an NPC and give him gold coins, those coins do not "vanish" -- they become part of the NPCs inventory. Other CRPGs have done that -- NPCs actually have limited cash because there is limited cash in the world. If one NPC is out of cash you either need to buy stuff from him or go find another NPC who does have cash.

[Vllad]

You essentially want to make sure that PvP can insert itself into the process from resource gathering to production of game items to sale of game items. Isn't it enough to simply allow the resource control and retrieval portion to be the main focus area for that PvP insertion?

I don't think it is enough.

That is the one thing Shadowbane got almost right. If you want protected area's you have to build them. Like we discussed in the evolving world idea. You help build up an NPC town in order to create safety. However I don't think that safety should ever be totally secure. If you want meaningful pvp (the kind that makes you actually dislike the other team) everything has to always be at risk. Just as you build up NPC towns other players can come in and destroy the NPC town.

While I think you always need risk it can't be the kind of risk that makes players want to quit the game if they lose an important battle.

With currency models that is where you run into the situation where people lose and just quit. Currency models create a model where people have built up equity (gold) in the game over months.

I want a game where there is no currency because that is a better enviorment where people can lose and feel like they can recover. We want goods to come and go, gear, raw goods and the buildings we have built. We want to remove the fear of losing from the MMO enviorment and break the habits of always having the Purple Sword of God. It will break eventually so get used to it. The next highly successful PVP game will be one with out equity.


If you can accomplish that now you have a pvp game that will be very popular.


Vllad

[Dustie]

I don't think the barter system solves the problem of people wanting to quit after losing a lot of stuff. Whether its 1 million logs or 1 million logs worth of gold, it took a certain amount of time to get that amount of stuff.

[Vllad]

So you go out and farm 400 logs and get jumped on your way back to town and you lose the logs.
How is this different than going out to farm 400 gold coins, provided you also drop them when you die?

The primary difference is it is very easy for goods to be taken out of the game. In a world where everything breaks or gets destroyed you will always need more raw goods.

I have yet to see a system that takes gold out of the game in the same kind of bulk that goods are.

In a player run crafting world players are getting there goods from PC's not NPC's. There fore you have very limited means of getting cash out of the game. Especially when gold farms can inflate everything.

If you use NPC's to take gold out of the economy then I think you have to have everything bought off NPC's. This then destroy's the crafting model. That lessons the PVP and doesn't add anything.

I don't think you can have a decent crafting/resourse game and still have a way to take cash out of the game as long as currency still remains. I think crafting is good for pvp but I have yet to see a game where currency is good for pvp so that is why I think the former is better.


Vllad

[Vllad]

I don't think the barter system solves the problem of people wanting to quit after losing a lot of stuff. Whether its 1 million logs or 1 million logs worth of gold, it took a certain amount of time to get that amount of stuff.

You are right but as long as your equity is in items used for crafting/building no one should ever lose 1 million logs.

If you lose 1 million logs that means they were worthless to begin with. With a barter system there is no reason to be building up equity. You are only hanging on to what you need. They should be trading it or using it or not collecting it at all.

Losing a weeks worth of logs? Sure, losing 6 months worth of logs? No way that should happen unless some guy just loves collecting logs and never doing anything with them. If that is the case losing a million logs shouldn't be a big deal.

In a barter system equity will be at a minimum.


Vllad

[Dustie]

What if it take a million logs to build a fort? =)

[Vllad]

What if it take a million logs to build a fort? =)

Then you should be able to collect a half a million logs in a week. You don't want to create an enviorment where people need to spend months to collect something just to lose it. That will make people quit.

We want a crafting system that relies on players and resourses for pvp. We don't want people building up a ton of equity because that creates fear which is bad for pvp. Purple gear and currency creates fear.



Vllad

[Dustie]

I agree that its better for gamers spending more time PvPing then building up money and or resources.

[Hoofhurr]

Then get rid of money and resources because you can't have them be worth fighting for and not have them be worth hording at the same time.

[Dustie]

Technically, there should be some happy medium between giving out gear free at terminals (planetside) and having 1 billion worth of stored value sitting in your bank/base (EVE).