[MUD-Dev] Game Economies

[Marian Griffith]

In <URL:/archives/meow?group+local.muddev> on Thu 10 Jun, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> On 04:01 PM 6/9/99 -0500, I personally witnessed Koster, Raph jumping up to
> say:

Ignoring the math stuff at the end (which was well above my head anyway :)

> >We did something like that on UO for a while--the total quantity of gold in
> >the system was tied to the total size of the playerbase, and goods/gold on
> >monsters (or issued by shops) was tied to how much remained in the "bank"
> >(eg, not in play, either on monsters or in players' hands).

> >The system broke because players hoarded *everything*. Soon no monsters were
> >worth killing because they had no loot whatsoever, and every shop was out of
> >stock and out of cash.

Yes, players hoard anything well beyond their ability to do anything re-
motely usefull with it. And if the game puts some limit on it (like: you
can not carry that much weight)  additional characters are introduced to
carry all that pointless junk.

The obvious solution is to not only decrease the income as more and more
money is hoarded,  but also to put some kind of taxation into effect one
way or another. Thiefs are a particularly good possibility. Distastefull
as it is to many, so is rent.

> I started thinking about this sort of thing for UU to make up for the
> open-ended playerbase, but I saw some problems when I really examined the
> concept:

> >From a purely mathematical viewpoint, this approach will *never* work. Even
> if the player is forced to put money back into the system, he does so
> primarily to increase and extend his earning potential -- the warrior
> spends the 50m on the powerful sword that allows him to kill three monsters
> guarding 20m each, and now you have a 10m deficit. 

Indeed (at least I think I understand :) the only workable solution to
this problem is  if the system continuously drains money and equipment
from the players, preferably at a rate proportional to their wealth.

Marian
--
Yes - at last - You. I Choose you. Out of all the world,
out of all the seeking, I have found you, young sister of
my heart! You are mine and I am yours - and never again
will there be loneliness ...

Rolan Choosing Talia,
Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey




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