[MUD-Dev] A world without charity

[Mike]

On Mon, 2003-09-22 at 21:16, Eamonn O'Brien wrote:

> All this talk of who owns whos sword and ebay trading lately got
> me thinking, and so I started to wonder why players can trade
> items for money, and the answer is simple, because in game
> mechanics generally
...
> Anyone think this could work, and more importantly can anyone tell
> me why it wouldnt work?

It would work.  However, IMHO, it would be an unpopular system for
the same reasons our current Real-Life<tm> economy is no longer
barter-based.  Money provides a meta-value.  It, in an of itself is
not valuable.  A US penny melted down is worth less than a US
penny's worth of value.  (ie, < USD 0.01)

Money is the abstration layer of commerce.  If I have 40 gold
bars...well, I cannot eat gold.  Gold bars, in a barter system, are
really only valuable to jewelers.  So now I have to go find a
jeweler who'll trade me something else...say, a cow or 5 for the
gold.  Now I have to find someone who wants a cow or 5 and is
willing to trade food. Well, I found a guy who wants cows but he's
only got extra clothes.  At least the food guy wants clothes so
that'll work.

You end up spending so much time building up the connections that it
hogties your economy.  With the meta-value system (money, ingots,
feathers, whatever - so long as it's agreed upon) then I can sell my
gold bars for meta-value and buy food with it.

Your system *may* work if you were to put in NPC brokers.  You could
post what you have to trade and it assigns a meta-value to it.  You
also post what you're looking for.  Due to the fact that some items
are more valuable to certain races/classes/tradeskillers you'd
probably have to refrain from forcing 100% equitable deals.  Maybe
say all trades have to be within 40% (arbitrary) in value.  You
would be able to browse the broker just like a normal merchant but
if you wanted to haggle you could once you found a seller for the
item you wanted. (via in-game communication, or by posting an
"offer" on the broker which then notified the seller.

IMHO, I can think of better ways of slowing down the economy,
dropping mass player value-collectors and fending off
twinks. (Change up drop tables, use skill-points for weapons/armor,
etc.)  However unpopular, though, you could probably make it work.

Now that I think about it, the broker-idea isn't a bad one even for
"standard" games. :)

-Mike/Szii
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