[MUD-Dev] Game Economies

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 09 Jun 1999 10:41:09 -0600 
Neill Dang <Timothy> wrote:

> As for the unique items, how often are these unique items which
> are largely hidden from the view of other players? If players were
> paying a premium to acquire a unique item that only they could see
> was unique, that would be very interesting.

I strongly recommend you read up on the handling (and results
thereof) of unique objects in the Habitat papers (posted to the list
and thus in the archives and available at various sites I can't find
right now (firewall troubles)).  The Egg and custom heads are
particularly interesting there.  The Egg was a unique physically
huge object that became greatly sought after and a signal of
initiation into the social structure of the world ("Egg parties").

> One way to think of it is that MUDs are trying to have it both
> ways - on the one hand, they need economic growth to support
> players advancing and becoming wealthier. On the other hand, they
> don't want economic growth because they aren't equipped to handle
> it. Economic growth might cause money inflation, in which case
> newbies are in trouble. Or it might cause too much prosperity, in
> which case the newbies will all be outfitted with +5 swords.

> When there is consistent economic growth in the real world, it is
> normally accompanied by improved technology and a scaling up of
> the normal living standards. I gather (might be mistaken) most
> MUDs can't handle innovation well. And an improved living standard
> means that the entire difficulty of the MUD must be scaled up.

Precisely.  They attempt to implement economic growth as a component
feature of an otherwise static system.  It doesn't work.  The logic
is quite obvious.  The problem is that nobody has really figured out
how to design an effective dynamic system that tends to reasonable
values.  You either get rampant inflation or uncontrollable
deflation once the system hits an edge condition.

Somehow, long term, we have to arrive at systems whose internal
values are a product, a reasonable latency moving average, of the
systems that produce and are affected by that value.  Thus, for
instance, as the population of effective weaponry increases and the
power curve for newbie growth reacts appropriately, the values on
NPC's scale to match after a suitable (if short) delay.  Its not a
real solution of course.  To get a real solution you have to
implement evolution which is kinda difficult to codify.  But its a
chack that can do a reasonable job at simulating a solution for a
while.

>> Do not forget Dr.Cat's ideas about 'attention' being the ultimate
>> gain on any mud.

> I'm looking for some references on this.

See the list archives.

>> Two additional systems I have seen in use that had a devastating
>> effect on the typical play were limiting money found on a monster
>> in relation to the total amount of money owned by the players.

> This is interesting. Can you tell me where it was done? It like it
> might be able to be correlated to a progressive income tax.

The problem is that the equation devalues into a negative feedback
loop as hoarding and value consolidation take place.

--
J C Lawrence                                   Home: claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                Linux/IA64 - Work: claw at varesearch.com
 ... Beware of cromagnons wearing chewing gum and palm pilots ...


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