[MUD-Dev] Re: online economy behavior (was: Self-organizing worlds)

[Robert Green]

On Tue, 23 Mar 1999, Adam Wiggins wrote:

> Or, in a nutshell - there are few luxuries to be purchased in most fantasy
> worlds.
> 

[ lunch snipped, but sounded tasty to me ... yum, Guiness! ]

> Obviously there's quite a difference there.  I'm sure one could think of many
> examples beyond just food - clothing, entertainment, and even simple personal
> comfort (running the heater at night).
> 
> Sometimes these sorts of elements exist - for example, being able to pay
> a sum of money to personalize an object name ("Bob's longsword of death"),
> or to purchase a house/guildhall.  But generally they are few and far
> between, rather than a daily event like a nice lunch or a movie or running
> your heater.

Well, I think its 'feast or famine' in most muds ... I've seen "luxury"
items but they are all really extravagant, personalized estates, custom
descriptions, etc.

Also, some muds have player-to-player barter as an established tradition
(Legendmud's auction channel comes to mind, all the best equipment is
always being bought and sold) 

I think the part where the simulation falls short is the 'intangibles' .. 
there is really nothing in between 'necessities' and the extravagant
items, really... things like your tasty lunch, entertainment, etc ... what
is the mud simulation of going to a concert or play? even if we were to
code it, how to we make it an attractive thing for a player to want to do?
The simulation falls short in that aspect, I guess. Unless there is some
way to quantify those sorts of things, that would definitely be a big hole
in the online vs.  real economic models. Of course, that can become such
minutia that it wouldn't be a worthwhile feature, unless done really
creatively ... then again, I guess you can apply that concept to
_anything_ you want to implement.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
           -=-   Robert Green  -=-  mooncrow at lava.net -=-
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