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Old 09-26-2002, 11:45 PM   #4
smadronia
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Coeur d'Alene, ID
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This is a great topic, my fiancee and I got to talking about it over dinner.

One thing to help drain money from players is to build in a kind of economy. If you use NPC's to sell items, maybe the items npc Bob sells aren't sold anywhere else, giving Bob a kind of exclusivity on his items. Maybe he has something that's very popular with the players on the mud, something that's disposable and used often, say pot pies for a example. Maybe his pot pies are considered the best around, being both tasty and more filling than anything else. As more and more people come and buy pot pies from him, he realizes that his pies are popular, and so charges more for them. Eventually the players may find his price too high, and go elsewhere. After a while Bob notices he's selling less, and so he gradually lowers the price of his pies back to what he was originally selling them for.

I know Bob's an npc and so his actions are most likely coded in, but a fluctuating price can serve a double purpose. It pulls more money out of the economy if people still buy from Bob, and it can encourage players to go out and explore the world, and see if there's an equivalent to Bob's pies out there. Plus, a flucuating price only affects those people who are purchasing that item, the ranger who scouts around in the brush and picks berries and kills rabbits for dinner wouldn't be affected, but that lazy thief who likes to hang around town would be spending more of his stolen coins to fill his belly.

The affect a flucating economy would have on players isn't a big one, but coupled with other ideas it could help drain the excess of money seen on some muds.
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