[MUD-Dev] Asheron\'s Call: An example of how easy it is to lose your balance.

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Merillat <harik at chaos.ao.net>

> Guesses?  The economy was broke, so people with cash-farming mules
> had no problems where others had to spend too much time harvesting
> gold?  Having a 3-part currency (Shards/Motes/SIKs) wasn't in the
> plan, so devalue 2 of them quite thuroughly?

> Either way, it should be interesting to see what effect this has.
> Hard-coded economies (gold/platinum/pyreal, whatever) have always
> had problems, leading to the development of a player-based
> currency. I think, however, that this is the first example of the
> pre-planned undermining of 3/4ths of a game's currency at once.  The
> fact that it's a fairly large commercial product means the amount of
> fallout could be rather large.

> I for one will be watching closely to see what effect it has,
> especially on the (highly subjective) "fun" of the game.

I'm not going to make any friends by saying this, but I have the
horrid feeling this falls under the heading of "A little knowledge is
a dangerous thing."

I ran into a couple of Turbine VP's at E3 (I have their business
cards, but not here and I'm afraid I've forgotten their names), while
trying to talk my way into seeing the AC2 engine (which didn't happen,
but I didn't really expect it to).  We wound up talking a little bit
about econ issues, and they basicly told me they thought there was
nothing wrong with in-game inflation.  When I asked why, they told me
"Because 90% of our players have primary characters under 10th level,
so what looks like inflation to the hard-core player doesn't affect
them."

Anyone see the problem with the above statement?  Turns out they did
everything right on figuring out what a player's "Primary Character"
was, except for one little catch: They counted a "Primary Character"
for each server.  That means that a *lot* of "mules" and experimental
characters got counted as "Primary Characters", and those tended to be
much lower level.

But these gentlemen really believed those numbers, and I had quite a
time convincing even one of them that there might be something bogus
in them (the other wouldn't give an inch).  That conversation combined
with this thread, leads me to suspect that control over design
decisions at Turbine may have moved to someone who doesn't have a very
good grasp of the background.  Someone who, even if his game design
instincts are good, doesn't know enough about this particular genre to
word his questions the right way, or spot when the answers he gets are
bogus.  And he isn't talking to, or isn't listening to, the people
there who might tell him.  Yes, that's a lot of stew from one oyster,
this is just an impression.

--Dave Rickey

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