[MUD-Dev2] stock market mechanisms in muds

[Peter Keeler]

Matt Chatterley wrote:

> But. Does this cover everything? What if I sell hats - decorative
> clothing - do they suffer wear and tear (colour fade, coming apart at
> the seams)? Would I (as a merchant) be able to control the quality of
> the product so that I could make it decay a bit faster, or a bit slower?

I think this last point of yours hits on something very important. When
I was in my economics classes in college, my professor drew four
quadrants on the board when he was talking about the theory behind
pricing. One axis was price, the other axis was quality. This has a lot
to do with where a company wants to position itself in its marketplace,
and how it wants to try to compete with its competitors.

So in MUDs and MMOs that I've seen where you could produce things as a
player, you take some raw materials and stick them together. When you're
done, out pops a finished item. If you have low skill, sometimes it
takes a few tries and you ruin some of your raw materials. Getting
better at the crafting skill just increases your hit/miss percentage for
-building- the item, not for the "quality" of the item after it exists.

What if you could pretty much always make the finished product, but the
quality of the product was affected by your skill? For instance, the
sharpness of the swords you can make depends on how much skill you have,
or the durability of the clothing you sew, etc.?

Add to that the ability to consciously position yourself in your
marketplace: when you setup your shop, you set a "price" and a "quality"
slider. When you make products for your shop (however your game
accomplishes that task... it doesn't matter) the quality and price are
affected by your sliders. Maybe you decide that in order to make money,
you need to sell lots of low quality stuff for low, low prices because
your competitors are selling higher quality stuff, but it's way too
expensive. You could set yourself up as the Wal-Mart of your town, even
if your character had superb skill at producing your products.
Alternatively, you could opt to sell fewer, higher quality specialty
items... carts with wheels that rarely break, bread with more
nutritional value, healing potions that heal more points... but to make
up for higher production costs, you need to make them more expensive.

I thought for a few minutes about making it one "price vs. quality"
slider instead of two independent sliders. That would simplify the
mechanism, but it would also eliminate some of the strategy. In a price
war, you could ramp up the quality slider and drop the price slider and
put yourself in a potentially unprofitable situation until you drove
your competitor(s) out... if you only had one slider, you'd be forced to
keep your shop set to "sane" settings all the time. It'd depend on what
kind of game you want to run, I guess.