[MUD-Dev] DESIGN: Active and Inactive currency

[Adam Helps]

Rayzam wrote:

> Any way to provide incentives to not hoard cash?

The opposite of hoarding is spending. Therefore, give the players a
reason to spend. Simple, right?

I think in this case Veblen goods need a good look:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

In short, the idea is to make goods (read: money drains) whose only
virtue is that *they are expensive*. They need one other property --
you have to be able to show them off. Never underestimate the vanity
of your players! If it costs 2 coppers to paint your house white, a
lot of new house owners are going to cover up that boring ol' brick
finish. However, painting it red might cost 5 gold (say, 500 times
more) and who's going to spend that kind of money?

Well, someone with five gold and inactive money just might. After
all, they'll be the only red house in the neighborhood, and
*everyone* knows that it costs five gold to paint your house
red. "Wow, that guys got ca$h to burn, eh?"

There's more! These goods have great properties as money sinks:

  - There is NO LIMIT on how expensive you can make this
  stuff. Value is conferred by the price and rarity.

  - There's no combat imbalance risk (you can't kill the dragons any
  faster just because you have a red house).

  - The conferred benefit is so small that people who have no
  earthly hope of affording it can rationalize it with a simple
  'waste of time' epithet, while those who can afford it get to be
  snobs (It's manyoufeek, daah-ling).

So, if red costs 5 gold, what about having yellow cost 50 gold?
Purple's 500 gold, Silver's 5000 gold, and aqua blue with animated
bubbles and gold sparkles is 50,000 gold. Just keep adding colors,
and watch the castes arise. I predict you'll get all sorts of fun
side effects -- like people buying the heinous bubble one, even
though it's uglier than yellow, just to show that they *can*. And
what better way for a guild to show off than to turn their entire
village into an aquarium?

It should be easy to come up with goods like this. You can do fancy
feathers for the helmet, rugs for the parlor, paintings on the wall,
glowing blue swords (does nothing, but it's expensive!), or logos on
capes. One of my DAOC-playing friends is in a guild that paints all
their stuff purple, partly for theme (they're the 'purple dragons')
but partly to show off how wealthy they are -- purple dye is
expensive.

-- Adam Helps
acius at simud dot org
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