[MUD-Dev] DGN: MMOG Game Economies

[Damion Schubert]

On 11/12/05, Vincent Archer <archer at frmug.org> wrote:

>>  - Smart Merchants - Most NPC merchants do not adjust their
>>  prices to reflect supply and demand. It doesn't matter how many
>>  rat tails you sell to a merchant the price all ways stays the
>>  same. Even if the merchant has 10,000 rat tails in his inventory
>>  the price never goes down.

> Ultima Online, I think, had that one. If you sold too much of a
> thing to a given NPC, his prices would drop.

Raph can fill in the details, but I'm pretty sure this was one of
the first things yanked out of Ultima Online after ship.  The
players that got there first effectively flooded the market for
every concievable good imaginable, meaning that players that logged
in on week 2 were left with no feasible way to advance thier
characters - every thing they tried to sell to an NPC earned them
only 1 coin in return!

There were definitely some things that UO could have done to have
made it all work better.  For example, the fact that UO had a
use-based advancement system meant that everyone starting a crafting
character had to create tons and tons of items, which were largely
responsible for the market floodage.  Which is an interesting
cautionary tale on it's own - be sure your advancement system is
compatible with what you're trying to do with your economy.

--d
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