[MUD-Dev] Simpson's "In-Game Economics of UO"

[Paul Schwanz - Enterprise Services]

Timothy Dang said:
> Using your example, and assuming halberds sell
> for 10 times the price of daggers (and ignoring material costs), then if I
> can produce a dagger in 1/10th the time it takes me to make a halberd, I
> might make the one dagger while I'm chatting with a friend and don't have
> any halberds on order. The second dagger I might still make, because it
> just takes a little bit. In fact I might make a dagger or two every time
> I've got a little time, though I won't settle down to create 10 daggers
> all at once. I won't settle down to make 10 daggers because by the time I
> plan on making 7 daggers at once, that's starting to cut seriously into my
> orc-slaying plans, which would be worthwhile for a halberd but not one
> more dagger. So (I'm not certain, but it seems likely) the value
> (opportunity cost) of my time is nonlinear with the amount of time devoted
> to a given task.
> 

Unless you allow the creation of items offline as proposed by Delusion in his 
article (http://lum.xrgaming.net/rdot.html) or otherwise move toward more 
persistent characters as discussed in earlier posts.  If you do allow for some 
type of offline activities, I would think that it would be easier to control 
item production, since everyone has the same 24 hours/day to work with.  You 
don't have to worry about how to balance the 80 hours/week players with the 20 
hours/week players.  You could make items take _much_ longer to create without 
the outcry you would expect from those who would otherwise feel forced to spend 
precious time in-game either "skilling" or engaged in other mundane activities 
akin to watching grass grow.  When you remove the "mundane time factor" players 
will be freed to make choices about offline activities which will maximize 
either skill or profit, thus separating the dagger-makers from the 
halberd-makers in a thoughtfully designed system.  

> > But won't those "skilled at production" vary with the item?  If there was
> > some sort of graduated profit margin, where "better" items were more
> > profitable (I think this would be assumed since it seems to reflect what
> > we expect in the rw) then those who are skilled at dagger-making will make
> > daggers and those who are skilled at halberd-making will make halberds.
> 
> I chose the halberd/dagger examples because in the systems I've seen,
> someone skilled at making halberds is also, by definition skilled at
> making daggers. In these systems, there are certain items which one can
> make at low skill levels, and one doesn't lose the ability as one gains
> higher skills and has more options. If the two are on different skill
> paths entire, then no, they won't compete with each other.

I can appreciate the dangers of trying to make each a separate skill path.  My 
point was that, even though the skill path is the same, the person who is 
skilled at producing halberds can be in a much different situation than the 
person who is skilled at producing daggers.  It seems to me (as I've outlined 
above) that a system can be designed in which a dagger-maker doesn't make 
halberds because he doesn't yet have the skill, and a halberd-maker doesn't make 
daggers because making halberds is more profitable, and he has a limitted amout 
of time and resources.

My point was probably confusing because it basically just restated what I'd 
already said in a reduntant and entirely unecessary fashion, going on and on 
long after the point had already been made.....  ;-)

--Phinehas

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