Dark Legacy MUD Forum

I'm not really vouching for anything to be done on DL, this is just ponderous crap, and I'm bored anyway so I figured I'd rant for a while.

First off, lets define 'failure', or determine whether or not it can even be defined at all in the context of a game economy. I see failure as when the built in economy, usually gold or some such, becomes so worthless that it switches to something else. A good example would be Stones of Jordan (YOU GIEV SOJ!?!?) on Diablo 2. On that game, the only use for gold there ever was, was shopping (going to NPC shops on the slim chance that they had a decent weapon), or gambling. Anybody could get gold quickly and easily. And the same is true for Dark-Legacy, especially when applied to the mines. So no, the economy isn't really failing, it's more like...Picture this:

A government prints a ton of money for it's citizens, and it all can be exchanged for its value in gold at any time. But for some odd reason, the government has an INFINITE supply of gold, and keeps cranking out money like mad. Soon everybody is getting paid thirty pounds of gold an hour. Now also picture this...This government has no taxes. Thats right, none. And very few expenses. They pay for your food, water and healthcare. The only thing they don't pay for is housing (which is incredibly cheap, because you buy directly from the government, and they like to see all their citizens housed), and gambling, and entertainment (I mean this loosely. Doesn't have to mean like a movie...just anything you don't need to survive, and buy purely for fun, or because you simply want it.) Eventually, your money which represents gold has no value. Everybody slowly accumulates a massive fortune. Except...Because EVERYBODY has a fortune in their gold, it's no longer a fortune anymore, is it?

This government also runs many shops, that have some useful things to buy. Cool computers and televisions...not the best or most powerful, just average. They only accept they cash that they printed. At this time, everybody else but the government has switched to barter style selling. Only the government cares about the cash. People trade between themselves for what they want, rather than buying it with the worthless gold that they can get whenever they want.

I'll trade you this sweet yo-yo for your pimp boots.

And on and on. From a game perspective, is this really preventable? Nobody wants to pay gigantic taxes in a game. Thats not fun. And the in-game stores can never have the absolute best items, or even lots of mid-high average, because it would put too much power into the hands of the people who exploited bugs, errors, or simply unabalanced gameplay to get lots of gold. Bugs and unbalanced things that pump out uber items are usually far more rare in most games, not to mention that items in secure games generally have their own unique identifier code, so it's easy for the servers to detect and delete dupes, as opposed to generic gold/money, which is anonymous.

[/rant]

originally there was some settings would could use for each area, called 'economy'
basically, we make it a set amount, when you sell things, the price drops the more you sell, because the overall economy 'pool' was dropping'

when you bought things, the money went back into the areas economy pool.


possible ideas:

- lower the values on everything
(- it's easier to manage small numbers, than large ones. The cost on everything would still remain the same, it would just be proportionately smaller - this would include gold drops on monsters)
- make NPC run shops important for gameplay (make the cost of living be high - travelling costing money, better armor/weapons in shops)

- make armor and weapons pretty much require that they be near your level, in order to benefit you.
- like, now people could use newbie gear to get from level 1 to 40, without much trouble - maybe it should be set so that the monsters you fight, would basically just cut through you if you had such crappy gear on.
(how we did this would not be easy, it wiould be a massive undertaking)

- make blacksmiths (the repairing of equipment) more necessary - You fight for maybe a couple real life days, and then be required to repair)


-- institute different currencies to help with the process, copper, silver, gold
if creatures start dropping a couple coppers, instead of the gold pieces, maybe that should be the first step?

I would much rather see this part work like i am about to describe if something is done. Rather than having it be copper, silver, gold, etc. Make it so that each nation (that is in the process of being made). This would mean that most creatures in that nation would drop that type of currency and all mud-owned shops in that nation would only accept that currency, and would charge a small fee for converting the currencies. It could also be made so that the exchange rates fluctuate depending on different things, such as how much of the currency is in existance, along with other factors.

Sigh. I posted this in General Chatter for a reason. If people want to throw around ideas that will never be implemented into DL, they can do it in the Idea board, making their own thread to do it in.

I just wanted to rant about multiplayer rpg economies in general, and see some counter rants.

How about just correcting the situation at hand? Throwing out more ideas or changing several things just to accomodate the problem at hand -that's ridiculous; it seems to be happening more lately too which is upsetting.


What's the problem? Like Weems said in so many words, Gold is for free. People don't even work for it. They go down in to the mines after miners spent hours mining the strips only to have people come down and dig up all the chests. I myself have made an INCREDULOUS amount of money in just a week's time. We are talking over 7 million. But at least I mined the strips I am going back to to dig up the chests.

Now instead of leveling, mining, learning crafts - people are going to try and beat the next person on the high gold list. eh...fun. >>

Question marks spawn at a rate that's unbelivable.

Two possible solutions:

1) Question marks remain spawning at the rate they are, but reduce the amt of gold in the chests to a quarter of what is currently available.

2) Cut the spawn time to a quarter of what it is, and keep the same amt of gold in the chests.

Something has to be done. People are getting bored with the game, which brings me back to one of the messages I posted a while back. If everything is handed for free - people will get bored and leave. You have to keep the game challengable.

Sorry Isa, but this will totally cripple epicing. I have to repair in the epics quite a lot, and if our eq damages even more it's going to be retarted, and redundant.

no tuler, we are talking theory here, not what will inconvenience you in your mind.

we are discussing balance, and if you get enough cash from a creature over the course of 24 hours, and still are required to use some of that money for repairing, and the rest for mad money, you are not worse off.

I don't think the economy is all that bad on DL. It's rather well regulated. To make any money, you spend time. While some have amassed fortunes, it took time. Since ingame (noncrafted) armor can't be a source of gold (unless rare or stockpiled, then you make money) and mob gold and items' sell price are mostly pocket change. That leaves mining (and other key tradeskills) to be the heartbeat of the gold flow. Keep the mining/tradeskills under tight scrutiny and there's nothing to worry about.

i think the problem that DL faces is deflation. everything is dirt cheap. As long as you have people that are willing to hand out equ completely free, no matter what you do, there will be no such thing as an "economy."
the flow of money in and out are way out of balance. it is easier to make money than to use up money. *cough*ep..ic*cough*
I dont know how to fix this problem, but if we boost up the cost of all npc goods it may help a little bit.


If a somewhat knowledgable player can spend 1 hr pulling in approximately 100k why would he/she sell anything less than 100k when it takes him/her more than an hr to make?


I dont know if i got this right, but judging form WoW money is not easy to make. Perhaps we can immitate WoW?

*cough* I pulled in 2.5 million in an hour...

what if monsters dont give out money at all. the only way to make money is to sell stuff to npc's shops or to other players? Equ that are powerful are "difficult" to obtain, expensive when sold to npcs. When i say difficult i dont mean from an extremely hard monster, i mean random pop rate is extremely low.

for example:
dur rune = 150 gold
fec rune = 500 gold
surp = 300k
benediction = 5000 gold
e100 exceptional garnet bindi = 30000 gold

there should be a single caretaker that is incharge of all the prices for all goods in the mud to keep the economy balance. This caretaker can adjust the prices of things to reflect the condition of the Mud. Under this system, crafters (those who work hard) and merchants (those who collect equ and sell them) will end up rich rather than those who happen to be powerful because of his/her class/race/level.

I find nothing wrong with mining being a primary source of gold either...except in DL there are two forms of gold...
Gold as a resource does not transform into gold used as a currency and therefore the example is incorrect. I believe you should be able to find treasure while mining, but not at the sadly staggering rate that you can atm. I took a gem miner down to see what all the fuss was about. Top level chests = 100-200 gold, bit further down -> 5k gold, bottom levels -> 18k, 25k, 50k, 72k gold pops from question marks. Now thats relatively harmless if the pops were rare. But theyre not, I decided to see what would happen if i mined in search of question marks. In the end I didnt have to mine much, saw some nice gems along the way, and made more than a million gold in under an hour...-> "primary source of gold" = understatement of the year.

I was under the impression all mobs still had a low limit (except for bosses).

So my statement is wrong.

Lingo, you hit the nail on the head hon ^^ I have ceased taking orders for that same exact reason. I had 8 bindi orders in one week because people had mined up high quality gems with stone miners or had the money from the chests to purchase. I had two orders of which people ordered a whole revamping of their eq. You know - it was great getting the orders, but once I realized what was going on - I LOST GOLD, they didn't. My prices were dirt cheap because they were based on gold being hard to get. Now, I am going to have to inflate my prices like 70-80%, and even more and I am still not so sure if I will accept orders in the future, considering I can go into the mines and do exactly what you stated, get 100k, but actually - in 15 minutes =)

to nel,

I quit before the mining patch came in so i never really tested it out. But at least now you understand why i charge so much for my equ. Not to mention that back in the days i had monopoly over alot of crafts

Game economy...doomed to failure? That is a hard issue to address, so let me start by separating two items in this discussion, easy money bugs and the supply and demand aspects of Dark-Legacy. Yes a source of easy money can upset the game. It has in the past been a problem, and most likely will be again.
When the spell Midas Touch was being misused to generate large amounts of gold, the problem was fixed once the caretakers were made aware of it. Now I hear that chests found in mining are a problem, and I assume that it will be taken care of also. These things will come and go, and I will always be too late to take advantage of it. The quicker these problems are found and reported, the less effect they will have on game balance. The supply and demand aspects of the economy are a lot harder to address, just like real world economics.

When I first played on Dark-Legacy, FEC runes were almost worthless. You could get a chest off the auction with a FEC in it for the min. bid, now they go for thousands. The growing player base made these runes climb in value as more and more new players needed them. Could the caretakers have guessed the rate of inflation, and if so should they have taken steps to curtail it? I do not think so. I have seen the prices climb on many things, and it does not bother me, even though I am not swimming in gold. Anyone who sells items they craft is a businessman or businesswoman, and must make constant assessments as to their prices. Only the crafter can put a price on their labor. I will not complain about the price I pay for anything cause if I want it, I must pay the price. Not that I have ever bought any EQ from those who craft, I prefer to make my own. So this aspect of the economy is under player control to a large degree already, as we set our own prices and I do not see any trouble with this part of our economy. Yes there will be effects on this part of the economy from money bugs, which will go away when they are fixed. The rest is up to us players and the value we assign to rare items and our labor, which is as it should be. I am against fixing prices on DL. Price fixing has not worked well in the real world, and I do not think it will work here.

One last reply to Lingolas, I would like to here more about the deflation problem you spoke of in your post. You said everything is dirt cheap yet most items that are worthwhile cost more now than they used to, but I may be wrong, as I do not buy items from players or shops. Please respond, as it would give me a clearer picture of how the economy is or is not working.

i blame the mining, we dig up sooooooo much money now, there's just too much in circulation. No one buys stuff from computer shops because the stuff is just cheap crap. Becaue when you spend money at a shop, it goes back into the "MUD's" account right? You could make expensive stuff worth buying so people spend more in the shops.

I still blame the mining patch, mining 24\7 can get you so much cash that we no longer have anyplace to spend it all. For some (me at least) money is hard to come by because i dont mine. a tax is unfair in that respect because some people dont have much money to pay up in the first place. I suggest that all the gold in alora be wiped once a month or so, or just leave everyone with 10000 and then wipe it all, so the economy gets a "reset". To be fair anyone with alot of gold at the time ofthe wipe can keep a certain percentage of that amount, so someone with 10000000 gold doesn't lose everything, only like 80% of it.

In this way, no one gets millions of gold anymore because they know that they won't have time to stockpile it anymore, so they only get money when they really need to buy something. The only problem i see with this is when people cut it close to the monthly gold wipe and they didn't make it in time with thier 1000000 gold to someone.

Am i on to something or do you all think i'm out of my mind?

[warning] excessive rant ahead! It's late at night and i'm bored with little to do.


Arureal wrote:




The economy that i speak of no longer exist. here, i will make some comparison for individuals that did not play long enough to have experienced the economy of the old days.

note: all prices are based on old values when i first started playing.
example:

best weapon: benediction -- price: approximately 1 mil
best eye piece: vision of O/C -- approximately 2 mils +
best head gear: davol -- 20k
best forehead gear: gem of tlaloc (not considering gem of tez): 500k
best ankle gear: vein of the UE -- 75k-125k each
Blessing of the Elder God -- 300k
best lvl 20 weapon: staves of alora ---20k each
...and the list goes on but you have a general idea...

When crafted equ came in:
best weapon: very depending on material and lvl, but usually free for a level 50
best eye piece: vision still --- priceless/free or around 50k max
best head gear: crafted helm--very depending on material, but usually free or around 10k for a level 50
best forehead gear: templas -- (citrine = at least 3 times better than tlaloc) around 30k for a level 50
best anklet gear: anklet - 40k max for a level 50
staves of alora - 5k max, useless
blessings of the elder god now replaced with a single shirt or cuirass: 50k max for a mitrill lvl 50

If you look at all the values, equ have gotten better and stronger but yet they keep on getting cheaper and cheaper. some items have dropped by couple hundred percent.

If you had 2 million gold in the olden days, you can probably be able to afford only a single diamond mask or 2 best avatar weapons. Nowaday, you can get a complete set with less. For example. i charged Aceas 670k for a complete level 50 equ set with best weapons and armors that were way superior over old equ (by enchantment space). And you probably already know that my prices arent cheap either.
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About fecs. when they first came out, each fec worth around 7k-10k over auction. I sold over 200 fecs in my shop at 5k each. I auctioned at least 100 fecs price ranging anywhere from 1000-4000 gold. I gave away over 100 fecs. i dont know what the prices are now, but from what you mention, it seems to me that prices of fecs are still pretty decent.

arureal writes:



I respect your opinion, but i like to point out that DL isnt exactly the real world. I agree that price fixing does not work well in the real world (example: Hong Kong). DL community is too small to work like the real world. People usually dont give out "free stuff" in the real world. People in the real world have to earn at a set minimum salary or they will die of starvation, in DL, there isnt any of that. Materials usually depreciate in the real world according to time. On DL, materials depreciate according to patches and someone elses generostiy (good luck trying to sell mitrill when someone else gives them away for free). Money is not unlimited in the real world as in DL. In the real world, well at least in the US, the fed does mess around with the econmy greatly. They constantly fix the interest rate to make sure that the economy does not crash. Obviously DL does not have a fed monitoring its economy, no wonder the economy crashed and stayed crashed around 3 years ago. Btw, the economy already crashed before the craft system went in. The craft system made the economy worst. however, at the same time, a new "craft economy" developed. it lasted for a short while but then sharply dipped when alot of people mastered their crafts (like me). I believe that this dip has never really went up, in fact, it has gone even farther down than the original economy.

an average player can make money alot easier than to spend money. Eventhough the caretakers have made great effort to change this, I still think that money is still very easy to get.

arureal writes:


can you please give some example? I havent really played for at least a month now so i dont really know how the economy is like. from what i've heard, alot of people got rich from the last mining patch.



I would be very delighted to see that item's prices reflect the it's effort and it's worth. How can we make this possible? i dont know. As Arureal points out that "[this] is a hard issue to address." If we decide to have items at a fixed minimum price when sold to npc shops, how can we make this price flexible enough so that it is sensitive to quantities circulating the economy and their "worth?" Someone would have to constantly keep on changing the prices.


to Arureal: i dont know if i answer your question, but i sure wrote alot.

You know, if you want to "fix the economy" you could just get rid of the epic chests that give miners gold at hundreds times the rate the rest of us get it(notice that all of these people with insane gold are miners, or that this inflation occured along with the new mine code?). Then, maybe, I wouldn't have to spend a week epicing to make enough money for a crafter to consider it worth their while to make an item for me. As it is, a miner can make more money in half an hour than I can in days of epicing.

I've heard several of my miner friends bragging about how they can get millions of gold in an hour from epic chests, while I have to kill 2,000 dragons in epics to get even 1 mil(and that takes a hell of a lot longer than an hour). Any other way I try to make money is even slower.

Items don't cost ridiculously high amounts of gold now because of some obscure economic problem, it's because miners get so much gold from these mining chests that you have to give them insane amounts of gold, or it's not worth their time to craft for you.

Nuitari, this entire thread was made right around the time when mining chests were at their height. They have been toned down 'a lot' from what I hear, but I don't know exactly.

And you are wrong in your assumptions, the mining chests were/are PART of the problem, not a different problem. Killing mining chests would stop the lame abuse that everybody loves to do so much, but it would not fix the larger problem.

since the mining patch came in that allowed people to mine anywhere on worldmap, i have not seen any player report getting more than a few hundred coins in a chest.

And even when i mined, i would get like 50 coins max

But, perhaps there are cases i am not aware of?

The deeper you go, the more money the chests have. It's the chests on the bottom layer that are supposedly giving players ungodly amounts of gold. From what I understand, they contain amounts of cash comparable to what they used to, and have about the same chance to pop for each new room, but you clear rooms many, many times more quickly than in the old system.

Posted Febuary 22 in the craft forum.

I like pie.