[MUD-Dev] DGN: MMOG Game Economies

[Kirinyaga]

Artur Biesiadowski wrote :

> I expect that scaling you have proposed would only lead to
> wrestling rest of buying power from newcomers, increasing effect
> of inflation expotentially.

I agree. The problem doesn't come only from the money. There is also
more and more items entering the world, and they are more and more
powerful too.  With the rarity of a given item (more exactly the
rarity of the bonus it gives) decreasing over time, so does its
value, whatever the way its price is chosen.

Assuming a high-level player should have access to more money sinks
(to give a feeling of evolution) what you want to control is the
average amount of money available in the world per character level,
target average being indexed on a price index. To avoid a shift of
the money entrances from newbie to high-level game, you probably
also want to split the economic balancing system amongst level
ranges.

Now, there is still the items rarity issue. You also need to balance
this the same way if you want to ban inflation. Adding item decay is
really only like adding another money sink. You need to adjust the
total average magic bonuses available in the world per character
level too, perhaps increasing it slowly over time to account for
end-game play. You can do that either by modifying the decay rate,
or by modifying the bonus saying for example the more peoples are
using a bonus from a given source, the less "efficient" the magic
is. The items are removed from the world either by transforming them
into money, or maybe crafters or enchanters can also destroy them to
extract a component used to craft something else (at a loss of
course) that will also costs money.

This way the inflation is still controlled via sinks, but they are
still choosed by players, to adapt to a changing scale of value.  In
effects, this is a bit like you have a price index per type of item
and price is adjusted by acting both on the money and the item
value.
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