[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Active and Inactive Currency

[Caliban Darklock]

On 8/2/07, Michael Chui <saraid at u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
> Which is a problem that banks have to deal with in the real world, too

Banks don't normally have to deal with the problem that their
customers DON'T ACTUALLY EXIST and can't be compelled to live with
their situation. You can't make Bob keep playing your game until he
pays back his loan.

However, we could deal with this the same way real banks do: credit
ratings. You can't borrow more than your credit rating permits. Losses
from loans made on credit rating basis are rolled into operating
costs.

Or, alternately, the bank doesn't make loans to players. It only makes
loans behind the scenes to stores. Then you simply don't have this
problem. Since the store is operating to make a profit, and adjusting
to economic conditions, it can pay interest to the bank. Since we're
operating on a real economic foundation, shops could go bankrupt and
close. You wouldn't need that large a memory for most stores to
identify the items and players that are costing them money. When Joe
is buying swords from store A and selling them to store B, store B
needs to be making a profit on them. If it doesn't, it should become
unwilling to buy swords from Joe. Store A may become unwilling to buy
swords at all. Store B, in turn, may become unwilling to sell them to
Joe - or, indeed, to anyone. If a product is unprofitable, sometimes
it's best to stick it in storage and wait until demand rises.

If a genetic algorithm were used for this, you could run it for a
while before opening the game and make it better. Indeed, this is a
great opportunity for a middleware offering. Online economies are
hard, as Raph always says, and if someone could just solve it better
than anyone else - that could be marketed to other games.