Top Mud Sites Forum Return to TopMudSites.com
Go Back   Top Mud Sites Forum > Mud Development and Administration > Advanced MUD Concepts
Click here to Register

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 09-26-2002, 03:42 PM   #1
Ashon
Member
 
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 75
Ashon is on a distinguished road
Send a message via ICQ to Ashon Send a message via AIM to Ashon Send a message via MSN to Ashon Send a message via Yahoo to Ashon
The Politics thread spun way off topic when the delved into the Economy of MUD's so I figured that I would step in and help bring it back to topic here.

The standard Economic Model of MUDs is the Faucet->Drain Economy. The Faucet being things like, MOB's who drop items/gold, and the Drain being mostly Shops, but can include healers, food, etc...

The biggest problem with this system is that there are more mobiles and things out there then are needed. So the players have no need to purchase from the shops. They are able to get their 'best' items and sell everything else, and almost never have to buy things.

The only way to balance the system would be for the drain to be taking as much or more then the faucet releases. Which means not every mob should have gold/items.

I will also point out a couple of patches to the system that have been added over the evolution of MUD's. The first and player favorite being Player Houses. Places that players can pay for their own 'place'. The second, and one that most players hate are degenerating items. Items that need to be fixed, repaired, whatever...

So to keep myself from rambling anymore, what do you people propose to solve the 'economy problem'?
Ashon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-26-2002, 04:14 PM   #2
OnyxFlame
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 153
OnyxFlame is on a distinguished road
Post

OnyxFlame is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-26-2002, 08:41 PM   #3
flamewalker
New Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 2
flamewalker is on a distinguished road
Thanks for the spin off and summary, Ashon.

Combine the two ideas.

A non-MUD adventure game that I have limits the amount of coin that shops start with like you mention. If you sell too many items to the shop, they run out of money to buy things from you. If the admins can keep a persistant record of the shop's transactions, this will limit the store's ability to buy items.

Combine it with the your idea that the more intelligent NPC mobs shop from the same stores, and have to 'buy' their gear will resupply the shops with coin.

On the same note, you can also combine in the idea of degenerating gear here. The items that players are pulling off of mobs aren't really likely to be in the best condition, what being splattered in blood and full of sword shaped holes. Put the value that the shopkeeper NPC's give the players on a sliding scale matched to the relative condition of the item.

I know some of the graphical MMPORPGs are trying this path, but I haven't heard of any MUDs going to that extreme. I'm suspicious of it for a few reasons, including the ones that you mentioned. I very much like the idea of player owned/run shops, but I'm not sure how well it would work without NPC shops as well.
flamewalker is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-26-2002, 11:45 PM   #4
smadronia
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Coeur d'Alene, ID
Posts: 65
smadronia is on a distinguished road
Send a message via ICQ to smadronia
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.
smadronia is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-27-2002, 12:30 AM   #5
tresspassor
Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Minneapolis
Posts: 45
tresspassor is on a distinguished road
tresspassor is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-27-2002, 05:39 PM   #6
John
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 252
John is on a distinguished road
Wow, this is a great thread, I haven't seen a bad idea so far. Most of the ideas I get are from the mud I play which is an IC mud all about struggle, so we have a lot of opportunities open to us that might not be favoured by the player bases in other muds.

Just on the get rid of all NPC shops idea, I would love to see that happen in a H&S mud. It'd be interesting because it'd be a step towards RPing, sorta, so it'd be interesting to see how far it went. Some really famous H&S muds, do become RP mandatory (e.g. Armageddon was a -really- famous H&S about 10 years ago, until they completely changed it and lost a lot of their player base). So unfortunately this could happen to any mud that gets rid of NPC shop keepers.

Armageddon had the problem of gith items (that's a common agressive mob) being REALLY common in the shops, it was getting ridiculous. So they increased the AI for the gith, and make shops stop buying gith items after they have X amount in their stock. This isn't a problem now, because gith are one of the few agressive mobs that are intelligent enough to create their own items, although they do it extremely poorly and it reeks to high heaven.

Those 2 ideas (having mobs not have too many items, and they stop buying it after X amount is in stock) is extremely affective, however depending on your theme it might not work.

Another method they use is to have the mobs incredibly hard to fight (it's set in a desert world, no-one leaves the cities alone), however again, this might not be favourable to newbies.

A dramatic change would be, not allow players to get items from mobs, and create a crafting system, so they have to forage for items and make their own items. You could make animals skinnable, so an animals tooth can be used as a weapon, but would be MUCH more affective if it was crafted into a weapon.

That's all, everyone else has already beaten me to some of my ideas.
John is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-28-2002, 04:12 AM   #7
Ashon
Member
 
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 75
Ashon is on a distinguished road
Send a message via ICQ to Ashon Send a message via AIM to Ashon Send a message via MSN to Ashon Send a message via Yahoo to Ashon
Ashon is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools


Faucet->Drain Economy of MUDS - Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Creating an economy coranthium Advanced MUD Concepts 21 06-06-2010 02:21 PM
Top 20 muds Cayn Tavern of the Blue Hand 141 08-25-2004 12:30 PM
Any Muds? Asalyt Advertising for Players 6 03-10-2004 09:10 PM
RP Muds.....again Realedazed Advertising for Players 3 08-14-2003 10:43 AM
D&D Muds Muerte Advertising for Staff 2 06-26-2002 02:25 PM

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 02:54 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Style based on a design by Essilor
Copyright Top Mud Sites.com 2022