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silvarilon · 02-11-2010, 11:55 PM

Dentin's really hit it on the head. The amount of gold leaving your economy has to match the amount entering it.

Once you have a way to measure the total amount of gold in circulation, and an offset for new gold sources (or costs), your economy is pretty much set. The offset will slow down new gold until it drops to the right amount.

This assumes you have...
This requirement doesn't necessarily mean that every day they log in they spend money. It just means that there is a compelling reason to need money at some point in the game. Maybe entering some quest areas costs money. Buying a rope needed to get to the spider temple costs money. Other similar expenses that players can choose to follow or not. But something that players will work to get the money they need, so they can buy whatever-this-thing-is.

Many players won't spend money until they feel "comfortable" with the amount they have. If they need to spend 10 gold to go on a particular adventure, they may be unwilling to go until they've got 110 gold. That is fine, that "buffer money" will just sit in their bank account and not affect the economy much. It does mean we need to actively encourage players to spend, though.

What I do in Ironclaw is have some items with varying prices, while other items have fixed prices. That way we effectively "lock down" the price of things, so new players won't be faced with impossibly effective items, while letting the rarer items fluctuate with the economy. Any new player will be able to buy black leather and tailor it into leather clothing for a reasonable cost. Depending on the economy, they might not be able to do the same with worsted cotton. Hopefully this keeps the game accessible for the new arrivals

That might be a fine money sink normally, but I wouldn't advise it for player that go offline. For players that go offline, you have two obvious choices. Take their money, or leave their money. If you take their money, then you're putting it back into circulation in the economy, but you're making the player feel "punished" for not playing, which removed an incentive to return. If you leave their money, they will feel like they can return to playing at "full strength" and, other than not having gained anything new in the meantime, they won't feel like they lost anything either.

This is how we handle it - leave the money for them when they return, but in the meantime add it to the economy. So basically, when counting how much money is in circulation, we don't count any money in bank accounts from missing PCs. When they return, it could lead to a big dump of money into the economy, but the economy daemon should take care of that in due time.

02-11-2010, 11:55 PM	#15
silvarilon Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Posts: 144	Re: Creating an economy Dentin's really hit it on the head. The amount of gold leaving your economy has to match the amount entering it. Once you have a way to measure the total amount of gold in circulation, and an offset for new gold sources (or costs), your economy is pretty much set. The offset will slow down new gold until it drops to the right amount. This assumes you have... This requirement doesn't necessarily mean that every day they log in they spend money. It just means that there is a compelling reason to need money at some point in the game. Maybe entering some quest areas costs money. Buying a rope needed to get to the spider temple costs money. Other similar expenses that players can choose to follow or not. But something that players will work to get the money they need, so they can buy whatever-this-thing-is. Many players won't spend money until they feel "comfortable" with the amount they have. If they need to spend 10 gold to go on a particular adventure, they may be unwilling to go until they've got 110 gold. That is fine, that "buffer money" will just sit in their bank account and not affect the economy much. It does mean we need to actively encourage players to spend, though. What I do in Ironclaw is have some items with varying prices, while other items have fixed prices. That way we effectively "lock down" the price of things, so new players won't be faced with impossibly effective items, while letting the rarer items fluctuate with the economy. Any new player will be able to buy black leather and tailor it into leather clothing for a reasonable cost. Depending on the economy, they might not be able to do the same with worsted cotton. Hopefully this keeps the game accessible for the new arrivals That might be a fine money sink normally, but I wouldn't advise it for player that go offline. For players that go offline, you have two obvious choices. Take their money, or leave their money. If you take their money, then you're putting it back into circulation in the economy, but you're making the player feel "punished" for not playing, which removed an incentive to return. If you leave their money, they will feel like they can return to playing at "full strength" and, other than not having gained anything new in the meantime, they won't feel like they lost anything either. This is how we handle it - leave the money for them when they return, but in the meantime add it to the economy. So basically, when counting how much money is in circulation, we don't count any money in bank accounts from missing PCs. When they return, it could lead to a big dump of money into the economy, but the economy daemon should take care of that in due time.