[MUD-Dev] Game Economies

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 05:07 PM 6/7/99 -0600, I personally witnessed Timothy O'Neill Dang
jumping up to say:
>On Fri, 04 Jun 1999, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
>> My system uses limited supplies: each item is available in some
>> shop, but when they're gone, they're gone. In addition, when an
>> object is scarce, its price rises; when it's plentiful, the price
>> drops.
>
>If it works, that's great, and please let me know. My current
>expectations are that systems like that will be a problem, because
>you're trying to make the shopkeeper act like a real shopkeeper, rather
>than a natural resource. 

It works fine in games of 50 to 100 *total* players, as in full playerbase
and not just people online, but it remains to be seen how I'm going to
implement this with an open-ended playerbase.

>A crucial question is, how do you restock the shopkeepers? 

I don't. :)

When there are 15 force shields in galaxy X, then when those are gone you
can't buy another one unless you either go through the delivery service
previously mentioned -- or buy it from someone else. This latter feature is
currently rather ingeniously supported by the original author. There is a
flea market, where you can place any item for any price and the market
takes a commission. (I have been debating over whether I should turn it
into an EBay-style auction house, leave it the way it is, or add an
EBay-style auction house elsewhere.) 

This is probably a Bad model for an open-ended player base. I am still
examining options. One which I like a great deal is the concept of each
item having a "scarcity" point and an "abundance" point, the space between
them being "average", and each item having a rate of production based on
its current level with respect to the mean. Production would decrease
(ultimately to zero) when an item is abundant, and increase when the item
is scarce. I am still debating over whether these will be set using three
values (scarcity, abundance, production), two values (availability,
production), or one value (availability). It's also debatable what sort of
resolution I want to use on this. 

I'd appreciate any input other people have on this concept. I've been
hashing over it for about a week now, and I think this is one of the better
ideas I've had. I've thought about keeping track of how many items were
sold and replenishing them over the course of several days, and about just
using a linear addition of all items until they reach a maximum, but the
above approach seems like a better process. 

>I think microeconomic design can help to alleviate, but not really solve
>this underlying problem. One example how: If you have a good system for
>inter-player trading in place, you should be able to slow down the
>faucet, because wealth is effectively created with every player trade.

Well, I don't actually have a faucet in that sense. You never get a drop
out of it except as a direct result of your own efforts and actions. You're
handed your initial starting ship and equipment on loan, payable in ten
days. At that point, it begins accumulating interest (10% daily). If you
don't go out and do something to earn money, you can never pay off the
loan. It's sort of a way to kick the player in the ass and get him to do
something; he is *given* nothing except a time limit within which he is
expected to earn everything he has. 

Sometimes it backfires, the player feels overwhelmed, and he bails on the
game forevermore. When you log onto a game expecting the kind of low
monetary return you would normally get from a MUD, and you see this
immediate notice saying that you owe the government 35 million in cash
within ten days... well, geez, that's like saying "welcome to the game, and
in ten days you are going to be SO SCREWED". Money is never really an issue
in UU, but people don't always catch onto the fact that if you *start* with
several million worth of equipment this is obviously a high-scoring game. ;)

>Yai. At this point I realize that attempting to reply to several
>messages with one message was stupid, so I won't continue here.

Nah... not stupid. A "learning experience". ;)

-----
| Caliban Tiresias Darklock            caliban at darklock.com 
| Darklock Communications          http://www.darklock.com/ 
| U L T I M A T E   U N I V E R S E   I S   N O T   D E A D 
| 774577496C6C6E457645727355626D4974H       -=CABAL::3146=- 


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