[MUD-Dev] Broken Economies (was RE: Learning about MUDs)

[Timothy Dang]

On Thu, 5 Apr 2001, Koster, Raph wrote:

> UO actually did this. There was a "clean up Britannia" program
> instituted at one point which gave players the ability to turn in
> hoarded items for tickets. Get a lot of tickets, and you got a
> little gift. This program was *extremely* successful at reducing
> backup sizes and reducing hoarding.

I remember hearing about that, but don't recall hearing how well it
went. That's great! Do you think people really did just get rid of
their trash, or did they accept that it was a generally good thing,
and throw out stuff which they might have prized?

> A faucet->drain system where the faucet and drain are perfectly
> matched for each possible type of asset is functionally exactly
> equivalent to a closed system.

Yep, that's why I was wondering the worth of having a closed system,
rather than the practical flexibility gained from just trying to
balance sources and sinks. Since I asked the question, I've thought of
one possible reason, which fits in nicely with economic theory, but
sounds awfully burdensome. Implementing a closed system (or a system
with predefined, finite growth) could be a "commitment mechanism" on
the part of the admins. Then they would need to either suffer player
gripes when the world went dry, or figure out how to fix it instead of
allowing the unbalance to continue until it got really ugly.

------------------------------
Timothy O'Neill Dang / Cretog8
520-884-7261
One monkey don't stop no show.

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