[MUD-Dev] RE: Economic Growth (Was: [STORY] Story and population size)

[Peter Harkins]

On Mon, Dec 17, 2001 at 01:06:38PM -0500, Paul Schwanz wrote:
> From: "Bobby Martin" <bobbymartin at hotmail.com>
>>> From: Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com

> I wouldn't dream of contradicting our lead server developer :),
> but I'd like to point out the fact that our design will allow the
> potential for something very much like multiple currencies, even
> though the game doesn't support them directly.

> We plan to allow individuals or communities/guilds the ability to
> *sign* a document, rendering its contents immutable.  We've only
> had initial discussions on this mechanic and haven't hashed out
> implementation (although the possibility of having the
> signature/insignia linked to a "reputation" was discussed), but I
> think the implications can be far-reaching.  Given the right
> economic environment (and yes, we realize that this part of the
> equation is non-trivial), there is nothing to prevent the
> following use of this ability.

>   The "Wood Trading Corporation of Cosm" (a player-owned "guild")
>   builds a large storage facility in Trebizond and another in
>   Timbuktu.  It stocks each facility with a good amount of wood.
>   It then announces that it will issue wood certificates.  These
>   are simply pieces of velum or parchment on which the corporation
>   has inscribed, for example, "1,000 wood units payable to the
>   bearer of this certificate," and then signed with the guild
>   name/insignia.  The WTCC commits itself to pay out 1,000 wood
>   units to anyone who presents this sort of certificate at one of
>   their "branches."

If you want people to create currencies backed by resources, those
resources are going to have to be scarce. If the orc tribe each get
a sword when they repop, swords will soon be valueless. You won't be
able to trade any amount of swords for sawbucks (couldn't resist
pun.) If you want the orcs to have swords and not break the player
economy, they're going to have to have miners and blacksmiths or
others to trade with who'll fill these roles. Players will get to
have realistic loot the first time or two, but they'll soon be
slaughtering a bunch of naked and unarmed orcs and complaining that
there's no loot.

It's also going to be hard for you to sustain any kind of currency -
if a currency backed by lumber becomes popular, players will happily
buy an axe and deforest your entire game world. You'll have to slow
them down by throwing monsters in the woods and having axes fall
apart quickly. Not that this will stop them, it'll just make the
currency less useful - everyone will break the bank by trading in
certificates for hard-to-obtain wood, except for a few coalitions of
players who team up and deforest huge swaths of the world at a time,
making it harder for local players to obtain wood, etc.

While I think the immutable contracts are a great idea, I don't
think they're going to lead to player-issued currencies as you've
envisioned. It'll require a large game world with realistic resource
usage, and that's pretty expensive in terms of resource usage
(cycles and memory.)  The alternative is to fudge, and I can
certainly see a few places you can do it. If you do, though, I'd
expect you'll end up with not-infrequent breaks in the economy and
lots of 'pay no attention to the man behind the curtain' antics
trying to fix it.
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev