[MUD-Dev] [DESIGN] Economy goals (was: Broken currencies)

[Vincent Archer]

According to Derek Licciardi:

> To me vendors and such provide not only a large part of facilitating
> the transaction between players, but money sinks for the
> owners(transaction fees, maintenance costs) and enhanced player
> driven content possibilities.
 
> I can't see why these can be so bad.

It's not "bad". That depends on what your primary goals are.

If you're looking for a lubricant for the economy, they are very
nice. But if you're looking for is a way to promote player-player
interactions, then they're bad. Because they are essentially an
anonymiser which removes the "other" player from the trade.

Someone mentioned that using a player-run vendor regularly, you end up
meeting the vendor's owner one day. Sure, but that wasn't my point. My
point was: "in what way does the vendor increase the opportunity for
meeting someone", and the answer, for that particular purpose, is
none. It doesn't add to player-player interaction anything that a NPC
vendor (which has no player manager) wouldn't. If you frequent a
specific NPC vendor, you still end up meeting one day the other
regular customers of said vendor.

A player-run vendor is a way to get more customers, but not a way to
meet more customers. It sure is better than nothing :)
 
--
Vincent Archer                                         Email: archer at nevrax.com

Nevrax France.                              Off on the yellow brick road we go!
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