[MUD-Dev] DESIGN: Active and Inactive currency

[Douglas Goodall]

Rayzam wrote:

>> In-game rewards for poverty and charity?

> This might just shift the hoard to someone else.

It would still be a sink if "someone else" could be an NPC... Like
there are beggar NPCs or priest NPCs and you can choose to give them
money in exchange for non-durable goods and services (buffs, etc).

You could also give benefits based on the amount you currently own
or on giving in general... If the effect was strong (-10% "to hit"
and damage for every hundred goldin your inventory), many players
would refuse to loot gold or equipment unless there was a net
benefit or they were *currently* saving up for something. It gives
another dimension to the equipment fanatic's strategy--i.e. "should
I loot this sword, which is twice as good as my current sword, but
also ten times more expensive?"

While some solutions would shift the hoard to other players, I don't
think that's necessarily a bad thing. No one minds inflation if they
can afford it. The problem (for me anyway) occurs when a minority of
players has orders of magnitude more money than anyone else. In this
case, only a very small minority of players can afford the most
coveted items. Usually, I'm among the wealthy minority due to a
knack for finding "exploits" and my preferred play style (mostly
soloing with a pet summoner or martial artist who have lower
expenses than other classes). Financial balance is rarely taken into
consideration (and players generally hate it when you do... "why
does Johnny do 10 more points of damage just because he has to buy
that stupid ammo?").

Another solution is the City of Heroes approach... to make loot
common and fairly meaningless (and to make loot "equal" for all
classes... no buying weapons or ammo here). I heard people trying to
GIVE enhancements away on public channels, and not getting any
responses for a half hour or more. Whether this will work over the
long term remains to be seen. And for me, personally, whether there
even is rare or endgame loot remains to be seen. I heard rumors that
later on there are "better than SO" enhancements, but didn't get
very far in beta on account of playing dress-up too much.
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