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silvarilon · 05-19-2010, 10:21 PM

Agreed. But that assumes the economy is growing. Without "outside trading partners" the only sensible way I can see to tell when the economy should grow is to look at the number of active players.

So a game with 10 players only needs 1/10th the amount of currency that a game with 100 players needs. All else being equal.
There are, of course, additional factors. The richest few individuals will be even richer in the larger economy than in the smaller one, etc. - but those are secondary effects.

But this is fairly easy to handle by just having a "max money" pool. That pool could either be calculated as a multiplier of the number of active players, or could be static and updated by the immortals. It takes time for these games to grow in size, so it's not a large chore to update that number occasionally.

Quoted for truth.
Players love to feel independent. You have to push them very hard to rely on their fellow players, and that's with things that don't cost anything. Making a need that requires money, when money is limited runs the risk that they won't be able to fulfil that need (which is bad if they NEED to do it.) - making it possible to fulfil the need without money, but with more effort is a good solution, but players wanting to be independent will mean they are biased towards avoiding the money solution, even if we would just pay the money in real life.

I'm constantly trying to find opportunities to make players choose between two wants. It's something that upsets them, but is entirely critical for an interesting game with varying social roles. In a single player game, why not be able to do everything? But in a multiplayer game, having different players with different abilities allows us to push them into needing groups, which pushes them into involving others. Which is, sort of, the point of playing a multiplayer game rather than just single player.

I wish there was an easy list of general "needs" and "wants" which could help give us ideas. Instead it seems to be something we each need to search out within our games.

05-19-2010, 10:21 PM	#18
silvarilon Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Posts: 144	Re: Creating an economy Agreed. But that assumes the economy is growing. Without "outside trading partners" the only sensible way I can see to tell when the economy should grow is to look at the number of active players. So a game with 10 players only needs 1/10th the amount of currency that a game with 100 players needs. All else being equal. There are, of course, additional factors. The richest few individuals will be even richer in the larger economy than in the smaller one, etc. - but those are secondary effects. But this is fairly easy to handle by just having a "max money" pool. That pool could either be calculated as a multiplier of the number of active players, or could be static and updated by the immortals. It takes time for these games to grow in size, so it's not a large chore to update that number occasionally. Quoted for truth. Players love to feel independent. You have to push them very hard to rely on their fellow players, and that's with things that don't cost anything. Making a need that requires money, when money is limited runs the risk that they won't be able to fulfil that need (which is bad if they NEED to do it.) - making it possible to fulfil the need without money, but with more effort is a good solution, but players wanting to be independent will mean they are biased towards avoiding the money solution, even if we would just pay the money in real life. I'm constantly trying to find opportunities to make players choose between two wants. It's something that upsets them, but is entirely critical for an interesting game with varying social roles. In a single player game, why not be able to do everything? But in a multiplayer game, having different players with different abilities allows us to push them into needing groups, which pushes them into involving others. Which is, sort of, the point of playing a multiplayer game rather than just single player. I wish there was an easy list of general "needs" and "wants" which could help give us ideas. Instead it seems to be something we each need to search out within our games.