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f13.net General Forums => Archived: We distort. We decide. => Topic started by: destro on July 09, 2004, 10:57:40 AM



Title: False Economies
Post by: destro on July 09, 2004, 10:57:40 AM
Kill these mongbats for me, peon, I'm off to play golf.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Raph on July 09, 2004, 11:26:10 AM
SWG did attempt to model innovation and obsolescence via resource turnovers. I don't think it was entirely successful though.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Fargull on July 09, 2004, 12:11:17 PM
Couple of thoughts.

The current worlds are too small and the ability to travel from Point A to Point Z is for the most part too easy.  In the past the major factor for smaller seperate worlds involved the fear of Player congregation and lag, is this still a factor?  Is there a reason you could not string what is now Nine seperate worlds together to form one big one and have those nine worlds now be nine continents, thus forcing some level of geographic isolation?  Travel would need to be hard to move between continents and perhaps limited by some form of buildable player technology.

Second is the True Black Dye syndrome of UO.  The impact of a commodity with limited and finite quantity created a huge money sink (well... accept for the gold duping)... Has any other developers introduced a finite resource?  Is this a positive impact on the economy?


Title: False Economies
Post by: daveNYC on July 09, 2004, 12:14:44 PM
It's tough to introduce finite resources when your business plan involves people playing for an infinite period of time.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HaemishM on July 09, 2004, 12:48:46 PM
First off, there is no continual supply of newbies; that is the dream of MMOG developers and any economic plan which places newbies at the very center of wealth creation is going to be doomed to failure. Sooner or later, the number of new players is going to dwindle to nothingness. In DAoC, after almost 3 years, the amount of people in the newbie lands, hell the amount of people NOT in the newest paid expansion or the RVR frontiers is negligible. Most of the Camelot zones that aren't in TOA or RVR are freaking barren.

When the game releases, sure you could have the newbies creating the initial wealth of the game and framing the infastructure. But that will collapse into tedium for the advanced player once the newbie player is a rare animal.

You also cannot produce a working economy without some means of taking wealth AND the products of wealth (items) out of the system. EQ is inflated because, among other things, items NEVER leave the game, or leave the game so rarely as to be negligible. Most games that have item decay generally ensure that items decay so rarely or take so long to decay that item decay is also negligible. Why? Because people BITCH ABOUT IT. It's the same reason looting PVP victories was taken out of Shadowbane, and item decay was lessened in DAoC. Nobody likes losing their shiny.

Characters and their wealth also do not leave the game world, at least not without a cancelled subscription. No one likes permadeath.

All these factors make trying to form a real economy an impossibility, because a real economy impacts people negatively from time to time. As shown by the abject fear most players display when faced with a PVP game, nobody likes to be negatively impacted in an MMOG by anything they cannot plan for and control. So when they are, they whine, bitch, complain, moan, rant and then cancel their subscription.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Stormwaltz on July 09, 2004, 01:36:04 PM
You may want to examine EVE Online's economy. It's been functioning and mostly balanced for over a year. There was one money dupe bug, quickly squashed and the perpetrators banned. The was one instance of resource market crash when CCP hamfistedly handed out Tech 2 uber Mining Laser blueprints to all and sundry. By and large, it works. Resources begin as asteroids, are refined into minerals, are built into finished goods, and - at the highest level - finished goods are combined to make high tech items. Material leaves the system via loss in combat.

That said, mining (resource collection) in EVE is deadly boring. Sure, at higher levels you run into powerful NPC battlegroups or player pirates when mining high level ore, but the actual mechanism itself amount to "click your lasers on and wait several hours, occasionally jettisoning the ore in your cargo bay for pickup."

Resource collection in every MMG I've seen is dull (WoW players, I'm not in the beta - what's it like over there?). The process of harvesting has to take time to limit input to the economy. So far, the only solutions I've seen are to make resources hard to find, or to lengthen the time required to harvest a resource (making finished goods require a lot of resources is effectively the same thing).

As a point of personal opinion, I believe that if you want a functioning economy as a feature, you have to bite the bullet and accept a mechanism of item wear and breakage (whether an economy is a desirable feature is a separate point of debate, and perhaps we should have begun by discussing that). Having the coolest craft or loot drop system or in the world is meaningless if in one year there's three Swords of Ultimate Smiting for every character on the server. At that point, there is no reason to craft or collect loot.

An important caveat to that is that you cannot patch item wear in post-ship. It has to be in at the beginning. I think players are more apt to accept item wear if they know up front that's the situation.


Title: False Economies
Post by: destro on July 09, 2004, 01:48:43 PM
A small, soft Haemish wrote:

When the game releases, sure you could have the newbies creating the initial wealth of the game and framing the infastructure. But that will collapse into tedium for the advanced player once the newbie player is a rare animal.

Bad news for the game's income of real dollars, but it doesn't have to be a bad thing for the in-game economy. It's an opportunity to simulate real innovation by automating those newbie resource-gathering tasks.

You also cannot produce a working economy without some means of taking wealth AND the products of wealth (items) out of the system.

Forget decay. While some items in real life are consumable or wear out, others can last for so long as to make their decay negligible in economic terms. Many goods are replaced not because they were no longer usable, but because something better came along. Some items continue to be used for hundreds of years. Depreciation slows the economy, but does not stop it. Without it the economy would simply grow faster; it grows either way.

You're still thinking in faucet-drain terms, where a 'working economy' means 'an economy where no growth occurs because wealth and the works of man are continuously being destroyed'.

Item decay and maintenance will slow economic growth - making players work more for the same result - but it will not prevent you from having to deal with the realities of a growing economy unless you make it so draconian that it destroys wealth exactly as fast as the players create it.

Yes, I rather think people will bitch about that.

All these factors make trying to form a real economy an impossibility, because a real economy impacts people negatively from time to time.

A growing economy is less painful to interact with than one kept deliberately stagnant. SWG's bazaar system, while flawed, makes interaction with the economy relatively painless. Do you think anyone's going to cancel their subscription because somebody has yet to buy the 1000 steel they put up for sale the night before? Or because they had to cut their prices due to a steel glut?

If there's a money tree for them to go and harvest currency from directly, they'll just go and do that. In a real economy they have some more interesting choices. If they're mostly buying things made from steel, they may just drop their prices on the basis that what they buy will also fall in price due to the oversupply.

On the other hand, if they want to buy things made of aluminium that mostly sell to musicians, the prices won't be affected by the steel glut - the demand won't have dropped, as musicians won't be any poorer, and the supply won't have risen, as aluminium won't be any cheaper.

In this case they had best get out of steel, paying the cost of retooling in order to make the money back mining diamonds, which are in short supply and going for a high price. The migration of steel workers to diamond mining will eliminate both the steel glut and the diamond shortage.

Yes, the players of the steel miners have been negatively impacted, but not in a frustrating or stupid fashion. The economy has faced them with a problem, they've made a meaningful decision to overcome it. Is that really more likely to make them quit than being attacked by a monster and having to make decisions about which attacks to use in order to overcome it?

I stand by my conclusion.


Title: False Economies
Post by: kaid on July 09, 2004, 02:20:01 PM
I am always amused by people talking about how broken MMOG ecnomies are.

The only truly broken economy is one where either every single item in the game is so easy to come by there is no need or reason to trade or everything in the game is so hyperinflated that nobody can possibly afford anything baring cheating.

The cred dupes hurt games but for the most part the players work around them without much fuss. In ac1 when the money dupes got to bad people switched to scarabs or other items as trade items. A barter economy is still an economy and if people can agree that x widget is worth y number of ge gaws and trading is still active it works fine.

Cred dupes happened in SWG and so they upped the credit sinks and the economy as of the last big report on it was running at a credit deficit where more money was leaving the game than was entering to soak off the excess. Frankly for as easy as money is to get in swg I never really saw much of the expected inflation and most goods are produced far cheeper than you would expect.

Eqlives economy is always held up as broken. I go to the bazaar see 500 traders and as a newbie am able to easily buy and sell to improve my character with very limited starting funds. That sounds like a reasonable system to sure some high end goods are very pricy but if you buy items from the past expansion they are usually very inexpensive and pretty comparable.


Economies in mostly closed systems such as MMOG are odd beasts but in time most eventually evolve into a form that suites the folks who continue to play the game although it may not be a monatary economy.


Kaid


Title: False Economies
Post by: ajax34i on July 09, 2004, 09:14:07 PM
Quote from: HaemishM
First off, there is no continual supply of newbies.


That's why, a while back, I proposed a "roaming" geography, where the newbie lands get "taken over" by the NPC's and become unavailable, the boxes serving those particular zones get turned off, formatted, and re-used for other zones.  

Basically, the players "live" on the frontier, and the frontier moves further and further into what was once the wilderness.  And the NPC's follow them:  what was once a frontier town like Freeport is now the capital of a human kingdom, and since it's fully civilized, the king basically doesn't want lowlife adventurer types prowling the streets armed anymore.

Keep a few frontier cities supplied with "newbie" goods but at the level your MMOG's at.  I.E. if you're in Kunark, there should be Kunark-quality goods available for the newbies off the bat.  And get rid of the bronze, no one will ever use it anymore, ever, might as well take it out of the database.

Quote from: HaemishM
You also cannot produce a working economy without some means of taking wealth AND the products of wealth (items) out of the system.


Having to work in order to simply enjoy the game is not fun.  I'll use RL as an example:  you need to let the average person be able to own a car, a house, and take a vacation now and then, with little work.   You need to let your players be able to play their class/character with minimum work and decent items.

What you decay, or make sure takes a lot of work, is the catasses / extreme wealth.  Millions of plat in the bank, when everyone else barely has 5k.  Basically, the uber-sword-of-death needs to decay or only allow 50 swings, whereas your average class epic needs to be there forever.

The wealth/work-needed-to-keep-it curve needs to be exponential, not linear like it's been with most economies I've seen.  Balanced properly, the catasses can achieve (first on the sever!!!) and be proud of it, and everyone else can enjoy the game too.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Dundee on July 09, 2004, 11:56:47 PM
You're almost entirely wrong about what makes a successful MMORPG economy in the first place.  Everything else in your article is based on a false premise.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Sable Blaze on July 10, 2004, 12:17:55 AM
Reasoning? False premise how?

A little enlightenment and not simply a sweeping rejection of the original premise would be appreciated.

I spent more time than I care to admit in EQlive. I don't really consider the economy there broken. It does "work". Goods (loot) gets transferred about quite frequently and effectively. It certainly has it's annoyances (boy, does it), but it does work.

When I returned to EQ the last time around (about 8 months ago), my shadowknight was woefully out of date equipment-wise. However, she was in possession of several items that had been removed from the game some years previously. Very desirable items to a certain segment of the player base. Very limited supply and a relatively high demand. One of my goodies immediately went up for sale and was gone inside a week for what was (then) a staggering sum of platinum. I was able to purchase what I needed to get back on my virtual feet and was back in the swing of things rather quickly.

That's a specific personal example of how EQs economy worked for me. One could also play commodities trader in the bazaar, which I did on a limited basis to equip alts. If you had some starting money and some time to determine what was selling well, you could turn a very nice profit pretty quickly.

I wasn't a particular fan of bazaar trading, but it did work and work quite well in transferring goods among the player-base. That's what an ingame economy is for, no?


Title: False Economies
Post by: Alkiera on July 10, 2004, 12:53:50 AM
Quote from: kaid
The only truly broken economy is one where either every single item in the game is so easy to come by there is no need or reason to trade or everything in the game is so hyperinflated that nobody can possibly afford anything baring cheating.

It's possible for both of these to be true, at the same time.  Part of the reason I left EQ is that as a 65 enchanter, in a social guild, I had a reasonable amount of money, several thousand platinum.  I could buy 90% of anything available on the bazaar.  However, none of that 90% was useful.  At the same time, anything I might actually want, was often in the realms of 100,000 platinum or more.  Those items were primarily difficult to acheive without a raiding guild, which due to forced availability(by all the big raiding guilds, and even the raiding chat channel groups on my server), I was not able to achieve.

In short, items for alts where so cheap or so easy to get with my enchanter that there was no point for struggling for them with alts, yet items for my enchanter were so insanely high-priced I'd never have afforded them, even if I sat in PoK and did nothing but sell castings of KEI.

Quote from: Dundee
You're almost entirely wrong about what makes a successful MMORPG economy in the first place. Everything else in your article is based on a false premise.


Get some sleep, come back and explain yourself.  "You're wrong" is not a very successful debate tactic.  Frankly, I agree that the 'faucet->drain' model is part of the problem with economies in games...  In all games which attempt to have something like an economy, not just MMO's.

If all it takes to get more money is to go defeat more respawning moneybags, then a)eventually anyone will be able to buy anything they want, or b) price inflation will occur.   In a single player game, (b) is generally not gonna happen, so (a) does.  This is frequently ignored, due to the relatively low impact this has on, well, anything, from the developer point of view.  If they bought the game, you've met your goal.  In a persistant world, (b) usually effects prices of items sold between players, but not those sold by NPC's, except in the case of new expansions/content, where dev's can base prices on the current level of inflation.  In games like EQ, (a) is eventually the case for most players purchasing items from NPC vendors.

Secondarily, the 'faucet-drain' model is flawed in almost exactly the way PvP is flawed in MMO's, in that the player economy is an arena where players compete, and success within this arena, like combat in most MMO's, is based almost entirely on one variable...  time played.  Those with 8 hours a day to play not only gain more exp/skill points/levels, but also gain more money, than those who play for an hour a night.  Player skill can have an effect, as those with natural talent for trading can gain items via trade that are normally only the domain of those with more playtime, but only so much so.

--
Alkiera


Title: False Economies
Post by: destro on July 10, 2004, 06:09:40 AM
Alkiera wrote:

the 'faucet-drain' model is flawed in almost exactly the way PvP is flawed in MMO's, in that the player economy is an arena where players compete, and success within this arena, like combat in most MMO's, is based almost entirely on one variable... time played.

And, like most MMOG PvP, it’s also not fun.

A couple of posters said that MMOG economies are not broken because they have found they can still buy and sell, and the economy has adapted to whatever problems have arisen - even if it means switching to a barter system when the currency collapses.

But MMOGs are first and foremost games, and I’m writing from the perspective that a game economy should be a game in itself. Players will have fun when they get to make meaningful decisions, and are not simply pointed in the direction of the money tree and told to start picking.

Going back to the example of a steel glut, all of the steel producers can get out of the business and the ones who don’t will find conditions easing as the others do. Nobody is stuck in an unfun position of being unable to make money and having nothing they can do about it, but those who watch the market and realise early on which way the wind is blowing will react first and get the biggest rewards.

Such rewards are not dependent upon time played, but upon strategy and decision-making.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Soukyan on July 10, 2004, 08:59:58 AM
Faucet-drain does not work terribly effectively as we've seen.

Has anyone tried an experiement to mimic the Federal Reserve and limit the amount of currency that is in circulation in a game? Would players then be stratified into upper/middle/lower class? Or would players find a resource that is gatherable as an alternate form of currency? How about limiting resources so that doesn't happen? True mimicry of real life might be a pain in the ass for players, but it could also work and not be a pain in the ass. Just some thoughts to throw into the fray.


Title: False Economies
Post by: destro on July 10, 2004, 10:54:35 AM
Soukyan wrote:

Has anyone tried an experiement to mimic the Federal Reserve and limit the amount of currency that is in circulation in a game? Would players then be stratified into upper/middle/lower class? Or would players find a resource that is gatherable as an alternate form of currency? How about limiting resources so that doesn't happen?

I happen to have an article to post on the idea of a 'Federal Reserve' later, but your other questions warrant some comment. Would players use something gatherable as an alternate form of currency?

Think about that for a minute. The Federal Reserve controls the supply of dollars, but leaves and pebbles are readily gatherable. Do you think anyone IRL would feel like taking your leaves and pebbles as payment?

The same would be true in a game - players will prefer the banknotes to hides precisely because they're not easy to gather. However, if the economy is not working properly newbies may find themselves excluded and unable to make money from the other players. In this case they will revert to a barter system simply because they don't have the option of using the more valuable and versatile currency.

Stratification already occurs, but the nature of these games means players are generally upwardly mobile - nobody stays flipping burgers because they can't afford college in a MMOG.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Dundee on July 10, 2004, 12:05:04 PM
Quote from: Alkiera
Get some sleep, come back and explain yourself.


All better now, thanks.

I'm still going to be pretty short, because there are some deeply held, ingrained sorts of beliefs about game economies that I don't expect will be overcome any time soon, if ever.

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The economies of massively multiplayer online games are notoriously broken.


But they're not, really.  You can point to any number of things that, in a real-world economy, would result in fiscal disaster, but in game-economies those things have only limited impact.  Like bumble bees that shouldn't fly (if they were airplanes), game-economies shouldn't work (if they were real-world economies), and yet they do.  In both cases, the reason is due to incorrect evaluation, rather than magic.

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After duping effectively destroyed the UO economy


It didn't.

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Yet still they dupe.


And it still doesn't destroy the economy.

It does have a negative impact on the fun-factor of the game, both for the dupers and everyone else, so we want to stop it, fix it, delete duped credits, etc. for that reason, but it doesn't destroy game economies.

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Currency enters the system by being created on spawned monsters or mission terminals. Players harvest it, it circulates, and is eventually destroyed in a cash sink. There’s no check on inflation save the time taken in extracting the cash, and NPC vendor prices are generally not linked into the actual economy and don’t respond to supply and demand.


A great deal of money leaves the economy without actually leaving the system.  Meaning, it isn't 'deleted', but it isn't being utilized either.  'Dead money' is essentially sunk.

This provides a challenge for developers to ensure that the player who winds up with this mountain of dead money still has some reason to participate in the economy (they might do it for the money just to see how big a pile of cash they can accumulate, but they certainly won't be doing it because they *need* the money, and won't ever view and handful of cash as any sort of meaningful reward).

But mostly these are crafters with all this cash, and mostly crafters don't do what they do for the money.  We've seen time and again, multibillionaire ubercrafters continue to make and sell goods long after the money they're charging ceases to have any meaning (to them).

Also, dupes are almost 100% the result of multi-server complications, rather than being the result of the faucet-sink-drain model.

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Is a more realistic system possible within a MMOG? More importantly, would such a system be more fun?


Some people prefer 'simulations', and they'd find a realistic economy more fun (or at least more interesting), but simulationists are the minority of game players.  Not to say that no one will ever implement a real-world type economy, but I will say that majority of people posting here won't like it, and many wouldn't notice the difference.

I don't really have an issue with anything else you wrote, if the goal is to create a realistic real-world style economy.  I just disagree that it is necessary, or even a worthwhile goal, really.


Title: False Economies
Post by: destro on July 10, 2004, 01:29:53 PM
Dundee wrote:

But they're not, really. You can point to any number of things that, in a real-world economy, would result in fiscal disaster, but in game-economies those things have only limited impact. Like bumble bees that shouldn't fly (if they were airplanes), game-economies shouldn't work (if they were real-world economies), and yet they do. In both cases, the reason is due to incorrect evaluation, rather than magic.

Who mentioned magic? MMOG economies are broken because they aren't fun.

It does have a negative impact on the fun-factor of the game, both for the dupers and everyone else, so we want to stop it, fix it, delete duped credits, etc. for that reason

Want to, but apparently can't.

A great deal of money leaves the economy without actually leaving the system. Meaning, it isn't 'deleted', but it isn't being utilized either. 'Dead money' is essentially sunk.

This provides a challenge for developers to ensure that the player who winds up with this mountain of dead money still has some reason to participate in the economy (they might do it for the money just to see how big a pile of cash they can accumulate, but they certainly won't be doing it because they *need* the money, and won't ever view and handful of cash as any sort of meaningful reward).

But mostly these are crafters with all this cash, and mostly crafters don't do what they do for the money. We've seen time and again, multibillionaire ubercrafters continue to make and sell goods long after the money they're charging ceases to have any meaning (to them).


So they continue to craft and sell because they enjoy crafting and selling? These are just the people whom you'll keep involved in the economy by allowing them to run trading empires and invest in Wonders. Wonders are essentially crafting on a grand scale.

By involved in the economy, I mean that not only will they keep playing the game and not be tempted to quit out of boredom, but they will also spend the money they have hoarded.

Some people prefer 'simulations', and they'd find a realistic economy more fun (or at least more interesting), but simulationists are the minority of game players.

I fear the threefold model and the Bartle types have become a millstone around the neck of MMOG development. Theory isn't useful if all it means is that when you look at a sub-game which involves a simulation your first thought is "Oh, there's a simulation, so that will only appeal to simulationists."

The simulation isn't the purpose of the system, but a tool for creating a constantly changing situation to which the players will respond.

Not to say that no one will ever implement a real-world type economy, but I will say that majority of people posting here won't like it, and many wouldn't notice the difference.

I don't really have an issue with anything else you wrote, if the goal is to create a realistic real-world style economy. I just disagree that it is necessary, or even a worthwhile goal, really.


You made player shards for UO before being hired to work on SWG, didn't you?

I seem to remember playing on one. You put a lot of effort into removing grinding and griefing, but merely taking out the misery wasn't enough to put in any fun. It was like Trammel, the only thing left to do was killing monsters.

Meanwhile, Cryptic have made a game which eliminates crafting and PvP entirely, achieving the same effect while saving themselves the effort of putting unfun elements into the game in the first place. If you can't see a way to make economic interaction between players an enjoyable part of the game, don't include it at all. Forget sink-faucet economies - implement no economy instead.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Operator on July 10, 2004, 11:08:14 PM
One of the most critical problems with most MMO economies is the simple problem of money itself.  When we consider the world that most people deal with on a regular basis we see that "money" is considered a resource that is immutable and constant.  But, think for a moment.  What is money?

Paper.  Plain and simple.  Stable economies tend to ensure the guarantee of their personal money supply through a network based on large bullion reserves and simple trust.  Crises, like the one that gripped Germany during the 30s, and the very concept of inflation, are rooted in what occurs when that guarantee breaks down.  People tend to panic when they have no way to exchange goods for services, because the only medium of exchange is essentially toilet paper.

However, when we look at the world of MMOs, there is an amorphous thing called "gold" that for some reason everyone exchanges for goods.  Why?  Because the Designers On High decreed that everyone shall use lucre as the medium of exchange.  This is, in my opinion, a central cause of the problems in many MMOs  - it invariably leads to a static environment in the economy, in which even slight value imbalances can cause large problems  (Not even to *mention* duping.)

Basically, when an economy is trapped with a single currency the economy is doomed to have an inflationless economy.  Why is this a bad thing?  Because without inflation there is an invariable anti-pressure on market forces.  Think about it - if there is, for some reason, an exploit that allows large amounts of money to be produced for little relative effort the natural value of money would fall, as money is *supposed* to be a measure of the effort that went into producing something.

However, when there is a static value for money, it cannot flucuate versus other things in the market.  Dynamic pricing systems can help remedy this problem, but when it is money itself that is being produced (i.e. through monster drops) only admin intervention can solve the problem.

So, the simplest way to remedy the situation is to develop a two-pronged approach, that more closely emulates the real world:
1) No monster should drop money
2) A Dynamic, server-side price moderation system needs to be in-place.

In a standard, negative-feedback system, imbalances in supply tend to result in higher/lower prices.  This means that no single item could ever produce an unwarrented supply of money.   The first part ensures that "money-farming" can never occur - which never occurs in real life, mind you.

That's the simplest, and most easily implemented, system, from an economic perspective.

Honestly, I think the biggest problem with in-game economies is the very fact that work isn't fun.  People play games to escape from bills, market flucuations and supply and demand.  It's not always a good idea to throw these in just because it makes for a more immersive experience.  Just a thought....

-Operator


Title: False Economies
Post by: Dundee on July 11, 2004, 01:45:50 AM
Quote
Quote from: destro
Dundee wrote:

But they're not, really. You can point to any number of things that, in a real-world economy, would result in fiscal disaster, but in game-economies those things have only limited impact. Like bumble bees that shouldn't fly (if they were airplanes), game-economies shouldn't work (if they were real-world economies), and yet they do. In both cases, the reason is due to incorrect evaluation, rather than magic.

Who mentioned magic? MMOG economies are broken because they aren't fun.



They're fun (in any number of games) for a *lot* of people.

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It does have a negative impact on the fun-factor of the game, both for the dupers and everyone else, so we want to stop it, fix it, delete duped credits, etc. for that reason

Want to, but apparently can't.


Zing!  You're right.

There really shouldn't be any MMORPGs.  I'm sorry.

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So they continue to craft and sell because they enjoy crafting and selling?


Yes.

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These are just the people whom you'll keep involved in the economy by allowing them to run trading empires and invest in Wonders. Wonders are essentially crafting on a grand scale.


I think the crafters are engaged in a meta-game, but I don't think "Wonders" have anything to do with that.

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By involved in the economy, I mean that not only will they keep playing the game and not be tempted to quit out of boredom, but they will also spend the money they have hoarded.


In this sort of model, it would be a bad thing for them to spend the money they have hoarded.  What you want is for them to continue playing, having fun, and also "drain" (essentially) all that crazy cash from the economy.

And they do, and it works very well, and as a dev' you should seek to understand what works, why it is working, and how to help make it work even better.

But that's just my opinion, I mean, you may want to do something different.  Good luck with that.

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I fear the threefold model and the Bartle types have become a millstone around the neck of MMOG development. Theory isn't useful if all it means is that when you look at a sub-game which involves a simulation your first thought is "Oh, there's a simulation, so that will only appeal to simulationists."


Heh.  I'm not one of those guys.  REALLY.

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The simulation isn't the purpose of the system, but a tool for creating a constantly changing situation to which the players will respond.


That's not a bad approach, but it's never been my approach and it probably never will be (on the other hand, games are made by teams, and individuals on those teams have to compromise in order to implement things, especially things that interact with other things, and at the end of the day "game journalists" attribute the work of 60 people to a guy.  It is my great fortune that the guy aint me).

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I seem to remember playing on one. You put a lot of effort into removing grinding and griefing, but merely taking out the misery wasn't enough to put in any fun. It was like Trammel, the only thing left to do was killing monsters.


Edit:  I made two.  I'll leave it at that.

Quote
Meanwhile, Cryptic have made a game which eliminates crafting and PvP entirely, achieving the same effect while saving themselves the effort of putting unfun elements into the game in the first place. If you can't see a way to make economic interaction between players an enjoyable part of the game, don't include it at all. Forget sink-faucet economies - implement no economy instead.


So... the problem with one of the most successful and enjoyed elements of SWG, is that it shouldn't have been included at all?

Look, I like CoH too - I have a 21st level blaster what ownz and such - but that's a little crazy, ok?


Title: False Economies
Post by: geldonyetich on July 11, 2004, 11:37:07 AM
Listen to me, dammit.   It's easy for an economic major to point at a MMORPG and go, "WTF?", but I have to agree with Dundee when he says this was based on a false premise.   (Actually, it was based on a false conclusion and the premises were drawn from that, so we we've a lack of both propositional and predicate logic.   However, why be so anal?  It's not like we open up our college logic books every time somebody writes a rant, so why start now?   So I'll not dwell on that and instead take what was valuable from what Destro was attempting to imply and instead focus on poking a few holes in it for sake of accuracy.)

It comes down to this: MMORPG economys and RL economies have entirely different goals in mind.    Where people live or die based off off of the events in a RL economy, in a MMORPG economy you just want to give players something to do.    Starvation and permadeath does not exist in any MMORPG I've played, and so you can functionally exist just fine on zero income.   So I've at least established you can draw absolutely zero parallels between a MMORPG economy and a RL economy because the very basis of existance in a MMORPG is completely different.    At best, a MMORPG economy seeks to imitate a RL economy, but it's only a crude imitation at best.    Therefore starting with a RL economy and trying to enforce it's limitations upon a MMORPG economy is game design suicide.

So back to the matter at hand: Exploits suck and they hurt the game balance.     However, the MMORPG lives on.   Why?  The thing is, the balance re-establishes itself over time for a variety of factors.   For starters, unlike real life, when people stop existing (which happens much more frequently than RL) they take everything with them.   Sure, there may be a few people who give everything away in the town square or pass on their goods to their guildies, but these are actually the exception to the norm.     Another popular factor of MMORPG economic preservation is that a game with adequette money sinks can usually lure a great deal of this duped gold into the bit bucket over time.

Basically, a MMORPG is a game, and so the economy works so long as mechanics within the game are able to control it.    Thus, the only broken thing I see about MMORPG economies is the same thing that proves MMORPG economies are remarkably strong:

eBay (and MMORPG commodity trading services like it)

Lets say you've built a finely crafted universe themed from Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol".     Enter into your perfect virtual universe a method in which interdimensional beings can sway your economy based on a method of barter existing entirely outside of the virtual universe.   Apparently, the god of your virtual universe was weak and ineffectual as he was unable to stop this from occuring.  

Suddenly, Tiny Tim is richer than Ebenezer Scrooge because his player happened to find a great deal of in-game wealth at a good exchange rate on eBay.  Sorry Scrooge, Tiny Tim wins (,at least as much as the definition of "within the MMORPG economy" applies,) because his player is richer than yours was.   Scrooge never learns his lesson about the spirit of Christmas because when the ghosts take him into the present and future Scorrge witnesses Tiny Tim buying out his company and sending him packing on the streets.  

How screwed up is that?   As Dickens begins revolving in his grave, people wonder if perhaps making a Christmas Carol MMORPG was a bad idea to begin with.   Don't doubt the background folks: it's an issue with the game mechanic.  

So, does eBay prove all MMORPG economies are broken?  Well despite the horrible manner in which eBay can mess things up, the thing is that real life cold, hard cash still is used to purchase in-game commodities over eBay.   So while eBay sabotages the MMORPG economy, it also proves beyond a show of a doubt it still holds value.

So, MMORPGs are apparently both broken and not broken.  Translation: They're a hell of a lot more robust than a real life economy is.   It takes nothing short of a complete meltdown to kill a MMORPG economy, and those actually seem to patch themselves up over time.

As for economy making MMORPGs fun: no.   Economies don't make MMORPGs fun.    Deep and enjoyable Gameplay mechanics make MMORPGs fun.    Economies just help to make a MMORPG feel more worthwhile in the long run.    

City of Heroes is fun, it has deep enjoyable game mechanics.   City of Heroes doesn't feel worthwhile in the long run before it's totally berift of long term consiquence such as an economy or (in an unrelated note) meaningfulness in the form of community ties.   Regretfully I had to stop playing that game, because when I hit BR 23 I just wasn't enjoying it anymore.

Eve is boring.   It's game mechanics are the very worse type of "sandwich" (http://internetgames.about.com/cs/gamingnews/a/skill.htm) mechanics I've ever seen in any MMORPG.   However, the game is considered very worthwhile to those that play it because the economy is very well developed.   I would have to be driven by powerful electrodes to play Eve, but once I got into it I could probably take some solice in the meaningfulness in the long run.

So if you were to progress to the Geldonyetich's evolutionary level of MMORPG cynicism, you'd see that a good MMORPG needs both fun in the form of deep enjoyable game mechanics and meaning in the form of a well developed in game economy (or some other source of meaning such as enforced social interaction like FFXI/EQ uses).    

Personally, I've been playing SWG lately.   The combat needs that retool, (currently it's just "buff your stats and take down things much bigger than you!") but the other aspects of the game (trade, exploration, misc flavor (entertainers)) are extremely well done.    Either we're going to see the combat retool fix the lead drag in the game, or the Space Expansion has the potential to create some fun combat activities.   Should that potential be realized, SWG's going to be golden.   (Yes, fellow cynics, I'm aware of whose making SWG.)


Title: False Economies
Post by: slog on July 11, 2004, 12:54:18 PM
Quote


but currency is rarely destroyed and creation of it is strictly monitored by the issuing authority;



Wrong wrong wrong wrong.  You fail Macroeconomics 101.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Dark Vengeance on July 11, 2004, 12:54:47 PM
Quote from: destro
Dundee wrote:


Hey Destro, I realize you're new here and all, but if you insist on sirbrucing everyone that responds to you, can you at least use the quote tags, or put the quoted text in a different color? Makes it much easier to immediately distinguish between your text and theirs.

I was reading one of the posts you made to the thread, and thought "hmm, this guy is making a good point there", only to realize that you were quoting Dundee.

EDIT: folks in irc inform me that destro is aka grant. *shrug*

Bring the noise.
Cheers................


Title: False Economies
Post by: schild on July 11, 2004, 12:58:48 PM
Quote from: Dark Vengeance


heh.


Title: False Economies
Post by: geldonyetich on July 11, 2004, 01:03:25 PM
I'm not sure: Did I kill the line of long reasoned posts in this thread or just mangle the corpse?


Title: False Economies
Post by: destro on July 11, 2004, 02:42:58 PM
What would ‘wonders’ have to do with people who enjoy crafting? Well, they’d provide another type of endgame for the crafting profession.

Economically speaking, they’d stimulate demand at the top of the economy for resources from the bottom, keeping the cash circulating. This would be a vital function in a system where players had to get cash from other players instead of simply collecting it from the ‘money tree’ mission terminals.

People do have fun crafting, but that’s not the same thing as the economy itself being fun to participate in. Often the broken, inflationary economy is a frustration to people who otherwise enjoy the idea of crafting and resource management.

Now that I think of it, crafting is often implemented in a very low-fun way. SWG actually has a very good crafting system and player economy, possibly the best in the industry – albiet one which still relies on drains and faucets. But the actual actions one goes through to participate in this economy mostly consist of clicking ‘ok’ on menus and playing very simple ‘put the square peg in the square hole’ games. These activities aren’t intrinsically fun unless you’re maybe four years old.

People find even quite laborious UO-style crafting fun, however, precisely because the game is massively multiplayer. The things they make have some sort of value to other people, and therefore crafting is extrinsically entertaining – the actions are not fun, but the results are.

It’s this shared suspension of disbelief which makes MMOG items worth something – time to craft, gold or even real dollars to buy. MMOG wealth is a fiction, just like paper money, and it’s a fiction that enough people buy into to make it possible to sell virtual property on ebay.

You see where this is going? Money that doesn’t come from a faucet will have this quality of desirability in even greater measure.

The point isn’t to simulate a real world economy, but to steal ideas from real economies that can be used to make the game fun.

The responses to this thread have helped me in clarifying my position somewhat. Perhaps what I mean to say is that the faucet and drain should remain, but that which faucets in and drains out could be resources, instead of currency. Currency would circulate among the players, an incentive to keep them busy and interacting with one another.

Resource sinks could not only take the form of maintenance, decay and taxes, but also voluntary forms such as investment in huge engineering projects, which also serve to move cash down to the poorer players.

I’m also in favour of a crafting game with more layers. UO had us gather resources and make things by hand; SWG has resource extractors and factories. This is a good start and I’d like to see still more layers, large-scale management and trade routes. Also, some way to incorporate the activity of other players still in the lower layers into your business empire. For example, setting up large, expensive workshops which newbies could use to craft items, saving them from having to spend time obtaining certain tools and giving the elder player a cut of whatever they sell their products for.

Dundee wrote:

So... the problem with one of the most successful and enjoyed elements of SWG, is that it shouldn't have been included at all?

Look, I like CoH too - I have a 21st level blaster what ownz and such - but that's a little crazy, ok?


If you’re going to dismiss ‘economic realism’ as a minority interest, why not take it to the extreme that CoH does? Not that I was arguing for realism so much as dynamism, using the real world economy as a source of ideas.

SWG crafting is indeed one of its best features. It nearly lured me into staying on after the trial, but ultimately there wasn’t enough to do with the money I’d accumulate.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HRose on July 11, 2004, 03:31:31 PM
Quote from: kaid
The only truly broken economy is one where either every single item in the game is so easy to come by there is no need or reason to trade

Oh, well. This could be a broken economy but it's a very good game for sure.

See, everyone is missing the point because you really shift the focus on how to build a decent economy while I think Haemish point of view is way more worth of attention: You should shy away from creating and balancing a real economy.

I won't go back with the discussion between "real simulation" Vs. "fun arcade" because it's not the point. The point is that whatever you are going to build is still something that will involve "gameplay". This gameplay could be a simple monster whack or a complex interaction but at the end the gameplay must be compelling and interesting. This is why I still find more fun and compelling to find the tools I need, like the equipment, along my normal play. With vendors and drops. It's way more fun than trading. Remember that, often, trading is a way to bypass the game. Considering EQ or WoW you can see that what you need (loot) comes directly from your experience and normal play. If at some point the economy collapse with the inflation it will mean that you are able to max your equipment with very little money. And this means that noone will care about PLAYING to achieve what they need. You can sit and pay but you are also killing your own fun because what was hard and challenging has been now dumbed down by the money. The active gameplay has been erased.

This is why the economy brings more problems than benefits to the game. In the real world the economy born to exchange different resources. In the real word peoples specialize themselves in an activity (and then gain and use money) because someone else is doing something completely different. And there's interdependence. In a mmorpg more or less everyone plays the same game, in the same way. The fact is that there's no need to shift the resources because you aren't FORCED to work (play), but you should love to do that. And you DON'T WANT someone else to do the work at your place. Because the point and the aim IS THE GAMEPLAY, and not just the loot at the end. If that loot is the result of a play session you have a good game. If the loot can then be achieved just by trading you are killing once again the fun. In DAoC the players are able to craft insanely powerful equipment and that asks just a ton of money. Well, this destroyed the epic quests. What required gameplay now requires just money. And the game is just more fucked up!

Economies, real or faked, aren't needed in a game simply because there's no sense in adding this layer of complexity. In a game like EQ or WoW the economy (a real one) simply doesn't fit, because it has no purpose aside creating a tons of disasters.

Recently Mythic demonstraded how much the ideas about economic systems in games are completely messed. They introduced powerful objects (artifacts) very hard to gain, impossible to trade or sell, impossible to obtain again and STILL decaying and disappearing from the world. Where's the sense? Why you need to erase an object from the world if it doesn't circulate nor can be re-gained?

Quote from: Sanya
Q: Why do artifacts decay?

A: We don't ever want to put items into the game that don't decay at all. Getting an item into a game is essentially a function of time. Without removing items somehow, an economy becomes completely clogged, and special things are no longer special.

Many people who have made something of a hobby out of game world economies have written essays on "mudflation" (MMORPGs have their roots in Multiple User Dungeons – text based games)

Now someone could explain me what relates artifacts to the economy? Or, even worst, MUDflation?

This is the whole point. Economies are unnecessary if the game itself doesn't offer a very strict specialization in the possible activities. In a game like WoW, DAoC or EQ the economy is simply a burden and every attempt at adjusting it will destroy a bit more the fun in the game. The more the economy works the more the game will bleed. In other games (like Eve), the economy simply works because you have 80% of the game painfully boring. So that trading acquires a meaning. And this demonstrate how much a real economy defines an horrible game with faked depth.

My opinion is that the less the economy is real the better is for my fun. Let's say that as I enter the game in WoW I have a friend that dump me a ton of money. Who the fuck cares? I'll still be restricted to use equipment for my level and the difference between my twinked character and someone else with no external support will still be minimal. Rejoice! The fucking economy cannot screw me beyond every limit! THAT's a working economy. An economy that doesn't continuously enter the game to hinder my fun at playing it. Harvesting money ad infinitum is stupid and boring. Questing to achieve something valuable is WAY MORE FUN. If at the end you are able to put in the market what you achieved with the gameplay perhaps you are building an economy but you are also DEMOLISHING the game.

This is why I consider WoW's economy one of the best in the market. Trading and crafting is damn FUN. At the same time the equipment is level restricted and usually bound to you. Yes, items don't degrade simply because there's no need to build a fucking economy. And I'm having fun because of it.

The slogan is: WE DON'T NEED THIS CRAP.

To conclude, let's say that we don't really want to develop another monster-whacking game and we'd like something deeper. Well, the resources (man-work I mean) are still not infinite. I think there are a tons of ideas that would require a lot of work a experimentation. So better use those resources at best, not at worst.

Quote from: Dundee
I don't really have an issue with anything else you wrote, if the goal is to create a realistic real-world style economy. I just disagree that it is necessary, or even a worthwhile goal, really.

/agree.
Quote from: Destro
MMOG economies are broken because they aren't fun.

No. When you aren't having fun you can be sure that there is an economy perfectly working.

And since you like to babble about exploits and dupes: they are still the side-effect of a game where money has become more important than playing. Reduce the importance of the money and you'll have an equilibrate game where duping and cheating aren't even an issue. Because the aim of the game isn't being rich.

P.S.
As a side note, I found the thread while trying to feed to death (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/aggregator/feed/9) Dundee. I hate Blogger's atom feeds. I had to use a converter: http://www.chompy.net/atom2rss/
Dundee, the one linked on your site sends ads.
Here (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/aggregator/bundle/3) I've collected Rasputin, Dundee, Lum and Chris. Anyuzer doesn't work and both F13 and Corpnews don't use feeds. Damn.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Raph on July 11, 2004, 04:44:15 PM
Hmm, I think that one thing that people who want to just axe economies are misisng is that economies can and DO provide gameplay. There's strategic gameplay, large-scale cooperation gameplay, PvP gameplay, and other types of gameplay that kill-the-foozle doesn't offer.

We may quibble all we want about whether harvesting is currently as fun as it should be (it isn't), the act of crafting is as fun as it should be (it isn't), or the juggling of inventory is as fun as it should be (it isn't). But it'd be dumb to say that running a business in a game can't be a fun endeavor or add gameplay--there's entire single-player genres of game based on it, and they are some of the most popular games in the world--Rollercoaster Tycoon, anyone?

The reason to have game economies that have complexity to them is the same reason why you have PvE combat with complexity to it--to have it meet the minimum threshold bar of fun. Worrying about wwhether dupes unbalance your economy is the same as worrying about whether buffs are overpowered, frankly. It's just another axis of gameplay.

Does your game NEED it? No. But given that it is one of the axes of gameplay that makes use of persistence, and persistence is one of the key things these games offer that other games cannot , well, leaving it out may be considered to be at least underutilizing the genre. Not a bad thing if you have a specific other area of focus, but not the One True Way either.


Title: False Economies
Post by: geldonyetich on July 11, 2004, 05:01:00 PM
Quote from: Raph
Hmm, I think that one thing that people who want to just axe economies are misisng is that economies can and DO provide gameplay

I'm not going to say that economy doesn't add gameplay.  I quibble more over what *type* of gameplay economies add versus what I might be looking for.   Economies are very external in nature, and as you outlined there's many activities within the economy that could be made a lot more enjoyable.  

As a player, you're going to hit the internal before you hit the external.  Thus, appreciation of an economy is secondary to appreciation of the GUI of an activity within the economy.   Thus, neglecting the fun of manipulating the GUI is going to create some bad first impressions that's going to stop a lot of people from seeing the beauty of the outer economy.  

So that's why I tend to push a bit on encouraging that the GUI gameplay mechanics become enjoyable on their own.
Quote from: Raph
Does your game NEED it? No. But given that it is one of the axes of gameplay that makes use of persistence, and persistence is one of the key things these games offer that other games cannot , well, leaving it out may be considered to be at least underutilizing the genre. Not a bad thing if you have a specific other area of focus, but not the One True Way either.

After qutting CoH, I've hit this conclusion as well.    Although the gameplay itself was fun, when I hit a certain level I just couldn't justify the time investment anymore.   I've determined that the lack of both an economy and community were large factors of this.   If CoH weren't a persistant game, it wouldn't have this problem.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HRose on July 11, 2004, 05:39:03 PM
Quote from: Raph
Hmm, I think that one thing that people who want to just axe economies are misisng is that economies can and DO provide gameplay.

It'd be dumb to say that running a business in a game can't be a fun endeavor or add gameplay


I don't say that. I just say that the economy is a big problem and nothing more for many games in the genre. In WoW I don't want a working economy because the money should NEVER rule the game-world, nor affect it by erasing the gameplay.

As I said the economy is viable only if you support completely different play styles and only UO or SWG try to do that. The result, though, isn't so wonderful. Still, it's probably the major strength of the game. On the opposite side what's the core in other games, sucks in SWG.

What I mean is that adding the economy isn't bad as a rule but it's once again something dependent on what you are creating. A perfect economy in a game will just suck in another that works on different concepts. The rule is that there is no rule. An economy system isn't fun nor useful per se, you need to create and develop the game around it.

What I said is just that, as a dev, I'd choose to focus the work on other elements that I see more interesting and productive. I'd try more to develop new dynamics coming from the game itself than trying to replicate the real world.

--

And then, while writing and thinking, I changed my mind various times. At the end I agree with you on every point.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HRose on July 11, 2004, 05:48:10 PM
Quote from: geldonyetich
So that's why I tend to push a bit on encouraging that the GUI gameplay mechanics become enjoyable on their own.


He already said that, I think.
We aren't anymore discussing the economy itself, here, but the gameplay behind its parts. And I think he knows what you are pointing.

Also, I don't think that CoH could be better with an economy. The problems are elsewhere.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venture on July 11, 2004, 06:24:33 PM
But it'd be dumb to say that running a business in a game can't be a fun endeavor or add gameplay--there's entire single-player genres of game based on it, and they are some of the most popular games in the world--Rollercoaster Tycoon, anyone?

The problem is that the economies in commercial muds aren't Rollercoaster Tycoon.

They aren't even Lemonade Stand.

The real problem is that, as folks have pointed out above, real economies have losers.  Someone's got to do the dog work.  

I'm lazy, so I'm just going to quote something I wrote on Sunsword's:

Quote from: Venture

I want an end to "player-driven economies".

This is a sub-point of the above, I suppose, but worth singling out.  I am mightily sick of the idea that everything should be player-crafted and every service should be player-supplied.  SWG is really the I-beam that broke the camel's back here.  I'm sick of wanting or needing something and finding out that I can't get it.  I'm sick of finding out there isn't a cantina on my planet with entertainers (and as far as I can tell, despite the docs, just hanging around a cantina doesn't do a damn thing for your BF).  I had to carry a low-condition gun around for days before I found a weaponsmith who would repair it.

On a more general level, and paradoxically given the first point, for me it really breaks immersion that there are no NPC agents in the economy.  I'm standing in the middle of what is supposed to be a city, but no one wants to buy any of the goods I have for sale -- which, in my case in SWG, are all resources used to make things -- and no one has anything I would be interested in buying.  This makes the city into nothing but a change in scenery.   Compounding the sin in SWG is the fact that its cities are loaded with lag-inducing NPCs that do nothing.  They're not even targets.

Finally, virtual economies need virtual ditchdiggers.  Someone has to end up on the bottom of the economic food chain.  All those crafters need customers who need their goods.  That's almost certainly going to be the PvE players, who at best will have the honor of being held hostage to the system's economic needs.  Think of how "empowered" you feel as a consumer in real life.  Look at item decay on death in SWG...implemented almost solely as welfare for tailors and other classes whose goods didn't wear out.  The entire Battle Fatigue system and unhealable Mind bar are nothing but welfare for Entertainers.  At worst, the system is also going to need people gathering the raw materials for those crafters (everything is player-driven,right?), which will probably be the PvE players.  It's unlikely at best that everyone is going to be able to gather all their own resources (which would be bad for the dependence needed to make an economy work).  Whoever ends up doing the gathering has the dubious honor of paying a monthly subscription fee to roleplay the working poor.  They can't possibly be as successful, economically, as the crafters they supply because economies simply don't work that way.  The crafters have to make a profit, after all.  And you can't fix it by giving the PvE players good loot to find, because that would trivialize the crafters.  My Ranger character on Corbantis has around 875K credits, earned mostly by selling creature resources (and a little from selling creatures, and 100K from a recent comission to make camo kits for every planet for a Ranger-dabbling CH, which was not really terribly profitable but a nice change of pace).  From what I can gather this makes me fantastically wealthy for a Ranger.  Successful crafters have millions.

In a sense, this is the same problem PvP muds have, except in this case the players are competing economically instead of physically.  Someone has to lose, and role-playing games aren't supposed to have losers.  ("Competition is an activity with few winners and many losers.  A society based on competition is therefore primarily a society of losers." -- John Ralston Saul)  The only way to make a viable crafting game, IMO, is to have the crafters playing their own PvE game against an NPC market, with sales to PCs as a side business mainly of RP value.


FWIW, by the time I quit SWG my ex-Master Ranger had just over 5 million credits, thanks largely to crafters to whom money meant nothing.  Of course, that meant money meant nothing to everyone else, too.

PS: Blame Dundee, he pointed me here. :-)


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 11, 2004, 06:52:09 PM
Quote from: Raph
But it'd be dumb to say that running a business in a game can't be a fun endeavor or add gameplay--there's entire single-player genres of game based on it, and they are some of the most popular games in the world--Rollercoaster Tycoon, anyone?

I couldn't agree more. SWG is at it's best when one wants to run a virtual business, doing anything. Being a player band, selling energy, selling resources, being a crafter. Like UO, once you've macro'd/grinded down the XP requirements, the game actually begins. I actually expected to love Eve because of the fun I had running businesses and doing politics in SWG. Little did I know how burned out I got because of it :)

Quote from: Hrose
In WoW I don't want a working economy because the money should NEVER rule the game-world, nor affect it by erasing the gameplay.

If there are better items to be had in a game, and items can be traded, there will be an economy.
  • One-way linear power curves like AC, WoW, EQ or DAoC require the improvement of one's equipment, and from their derives trade, and from there derives a need for a universally-accepted currency.
  • Open-ended economic games like UO, SWG, Eve and SB obviously work differently. They've been adequately covered above (except SB, which while not SWG, is very different than EQ).
  • CoH is unique in that it's more a multiplayer game than a massive one, at least right now. This is because, like solo games, if you play the game "right", you're guaranteed the ability to afford what you need when you trully need it. Plus, you can't get anything other than what you trully need. It's very hard to "work" for your money because you're basically guaranteed that money if you play the game "right". This means doing what everyone is doing: missions and keeping pace with relevant enhancements. The latter scale with your ability to acquire them either from drops or the stores. There are "poor" players, but mostly those are folks watching their friends outpace them or insist on playing the camp-the-spawn game that EQ trained them to expect. CoH is a closed-loop, the most perfect example of pellet rewards. In fact, the only reason I think they even need influence and enhancements is to give players something to strive for beyond levels. Influence could come out and enhancements could all be automatically distributed and I really don't think the game would change all that much except be slightly faster[/list:u]
    Virtual worlds need economies. It's the metagame that either co-exists or can supplement tha player society that compels the longterm play. Games on the other hand do not. They have programmed closed economies that are predictable and easily exploitable and don't suffer for it because players are playing for different reasons anyway.

    I totally disagree (and therefore agree with Dundee) that any MMOG economy is broken. It's just the price of entry. That's the reality of long-term games though. Except on launch day, there will always be someone who has done something first, is richer or has more time than you. The key isn't whether you can "make it" in a game. The key is how well you manage your expectations along the way to honestly reflect the realities of how you want to play the game.

    Newbies are welcome to trade-up in an economy. Even without schematic revocation, SWG is replete with ways for newbs to be more than whiney leeches off of the economy. Gather resources, ferry goods, provide other services. I've done them all and because I actually enjoy the "massive multiplayer" part, as in liking to meet people and talk with them, I've never felt slighted by needing to take advantage of that. Heck, even EQ is short on options, particularly with the resurgence of crafting in the last two years. DAoC as well, if you've got an installed base of friends who'll twink/PL ya to 50 so you can /level on any server.

    But it's up to the player to figure this out. If they'd rather camp mission terminals for pellets, well, they either aren't getting it or they don't want to get it, in which case MMOGs may simply not be for them.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 11, 2004, 07:12:49 PM
Quote from: Venture
The real problem is that, as folks have pointed out above, real economies have losers. Someone's got to do the dog work.

Yea, but not forever. That's the key. People are guaranteed an ability to improve their station if they're welling to bother. This was a very fundamental point noted in the December 2001 Berkeley study about virtual economies. While their RL-to-plat ratio was interesting, the more interesting part is that unlike the real world, everyone has the opportunity to improve their fiscal position in these games.

The rules are programmed in already. They're very easy:
[list=1]
  • Find what players need
  • (if this isn't launch day) Find what others chargef or it
  • Find the basic costs for producing it
[list=1]
  • If you can charge less, charge less. Eg. The cost for extracting fusion power in SWG fluctuates but last year was around 0.12 credits per units harvested. Many charged 2cpu or even 3cpu at retail. I started at 2cpu and ended at 1cpu. I actually went down in price, partly because I got rich enough to not care and partly because that 0.12cpu was a constant and I didn't like seeing others gouge for no more reason than to have an extra zero in their bank account at the expense of players not as fortunate to have 30 hours a week and a masters-level understanding of Excel :)
  • If you can't charge less, be different. Eg. I started my business three months into the game, when there were already a few large power providers. But power is almost a commodity. Players needed it (not so much now apparently) and always bought it. To compete with the entrenched power companies, I offered to make deliveries. Rasix or Baldrake can attest to how much time I spent doing that, to the exclusion of anything else. And this before mounts and vehicles (my "back in my day..." bit ;) ). I was different. I got contracts and then, months later, I did what everyone else had already done: stock a vendor consistently and had my contracts pick up power there while giving them special orders as they needed[/list:o]
  • Be professional. Don't make promises and then blow them off because you'd rather go hunt. If you'd rather go hunt, change to a hunt-based acquisition and advancement. Eg. When I got tired of selling power, I went to acquiring and selling organics from the mobs. Requires more money but you can charge more money too.
  • Diversify. Eg. I was offered the opportunity to sell power to a person who would buy everything I could harvest. That'd mean shutting down my other contracts. Fine, if that person was going to play forever. For longterm business stability, I don't like taking chances like that. I'd rather have 10 contracts that require 10 hours a week to manage than 1 contract that requires 2 hours a week. Of course, it's easy to see why I got burned out :)
  • Manage expectations. Don't grow beyond your ability to sustain a healthy profit (or, "plan for rainy day"). Eg. I started with three Windmills. Rasix gave me my first fusion generator. It took me a month to go from three Windmills to six Solar Arrays and four Fusions, and another two months to go to 54 Fusion generators, three employees and two partners. Growth isn't instant unless you plan to self-twink off of money you made in a previous career (which wasn't an option for me since I was previously a Master Musician :) )[/list:o]
    I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. If I can pick this shit up, anyone with a firing synapse can as well. It's just that the player needs to WANT to do this. If they'd rather not, then no MMOG is going to reward them enough.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Raph on July 11, 2004, 08:18:54 PM
I'd add that although participation in the virtual economy is technically PvP in that there is competition, it's really more on par with PvE in that  the patient will succeed. That said, RATE of success is definitely driven by skill. I find it curious that some will bemoan the amount (and type) of skill required in the economic aspect of games, but not in the foozle-hunting.

The real issue that Venture is identifying is one of rapid gratification. He wants it. I can't really blame him, since slow gratification is a problem with most of the MMOs. But what he terms "welfare" isn't, really. It's simply extensions of the web of interdependence beyond the more narrowly combat-focused area that he's used to. Combat focused players are going to dislike this, they want to get back to doing what they enjoy doing. It's the "I wanna solo!" thing writ large, is all.


Title: False Economies
Post by: geldonyetich on July 11, 2004, 08:47:57 PM
Quote from: HRose
Quote from: geldonyetich
So that's why I tend to push a bit on encouraging that the GUI gameplay mechanics become enjoyable on their own.


He already said that, I think.

Kind of.  Raph was saying that the economy adds gameplay but he is aware that there are GUI related parts of economy that aren't that fun.  

What I'm saying is that more priority should be put on the GUI back in teh design stage.   Not neglecting the economy outright, of course, but rather taking into consideration both the external influences of the economy goal design and the internal influence of the player's manipulation of the GUI in an enjoyable manner.

Quote from: HRose
He already said that, I think.
We aren't anymore discussing the economy itself, here, but the gameplay behind its parts. And I think he knows what you are pointing.

There's a saying in the industry, "The GUI is the Game", so I think we're on the same wavelength here.

Quote from: Venture
The real problem is that, as folks have pointed out above, real economies have losers. Someone's got to do the dog work.

In a game, why not make the NPCs do the dog work?

For that matter in real life, the time will come in real life when everything's in a vending machine and there's machines that maintain the machine.   What then, does that mean the RL economy is broken?   It does if you were hoping to scrape by on minimum wage all your life, I suppose.

Translation: There does not need to be people to grind underneath one's iron boot in order to make an economy work.    (My apologies again to the Republican readership.)
Quote from: Venture
I'm lazy, so I'm just going to quote something I wrote on Sunsword's:

Wow, that must have been an old post.  Things have changed a lot in SWG - I know where I can find a Cantina with a dozen Entertainers on at nearly any time of the day, and the NPC count has been filed down a bit - most of them you run into are either shootable or have a mission you can do or both.  

Most of your other points are kinda crappy, mostly due to the perspective you were holding.

Half-Empty: "Help! I have battle fatigue and have gathered mind wounds!  It must be welfare so those damn Entertainers have patrons!"
vrs
Half-Full: "Why do people see entertainers in real life?  To relax and de-stress.  We'll call stress Battle Fatigue and, in a way that's semi-related, allow music to perform brain surgery and simultaniously this gives players a reason to hang out at Cantinas at all."

Half-Empty: "Help! My item's decaying! It must be welfare for tradesman so they can sell new items!"
vrs
Half-Full: "Real life items wear down in time and need replacing, and this drives the real life economy.   There's no real reason why items in a virtual economy couldn't as well."

Half-Empty: "Help! I'm performing missions in order to earn credits!  I'm being held hostage against my will to become a ditch-digger in order to push the economy!"
vrs
Half-Full: "Money in real life earned by selling goods and performing services.   You can choose do either, with the mission terminals allowing people to perform services.   (There's also /tip and trade between other players to arrange non-NPC generated missions.)"

Quote from: Raph
I find it curious that some will bemoan the amount (and type) of skill required in the economic aspect of games, but not in the foozle-hunting.

You and me both.

But then, I haven't accepted that there's people who play games without an expectation that they're going to try to utilize skill in any particular fascet of the game.    If they really want to sit there and let the game play itself, there's always TV and Movies.   Little wonder that the grind is dead to me, I don't believe in it's existance as a handicap for poor players.   I prefer a game where poor players strive to get better with practice.


Title: False Economies
Post by: stray on July 11, 2004, 09:15:38 PM
Quote from: destro

Do you think anyone's going to cancel their subscription because somebody has yet to buy the 1000 steel they put up for sale the night before?


I did.

I agree with what HRose said...I just want to play the game my own way (killing mobs and players), be instantly rewarded for it (loot), be able to sell it quickly (NPC vendors) and get back to exploring the real game (if there even is one). I'm old-fashioned, I guess. Money is a reward, not a game in and of itself. I don't give a shit about running a virtual business, and I don't want to be forced to interact with someone who does.

Quote from: Raph
Hmm, I think that one thing that people who want to just axe economies are misisng is that economies can and DO provide gameplay. There's strategic gameplay, large-scale cooperation gameplay, PvP gameplay, and other types of gameplay that kill-the-foozle doesn't offer.


It may be gameplay, but it's kinda niche. Why force everyone to play a game that only appeals to a minority? I'm not asking to axe it necessarily. I just want to play another way (kill-the-foozle), and still be competitive.

I wonder: If both options (loot/NPC Vendors vs. crafting/player economy) were available in the same game, where both paths could grant the same items, would there still be many who chose to trade with other players? Would there be anyone who played a crafter for "fun"? I'd like to see how important a player economy is then.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 12, 2004, 06:23:42 AM
Quote from: Geldonyetich
Things have changed a lot in SWG - I know where I can find a Cantina with a dozen Entertainers on at nearly any time of the day, and the NPC count has been filed down a bit - most of them you run into are either shootable or have a mission you can do or both

Theed and Coronet have been the guaranteed cantinas since about two weeks after launch on all servers. Advanced world cantinas are hit or miss and player cities even more so, by virtue of being player cities. The Planetary Map helps, if folks use the /register command to register their cantina, hospital, hotel or tavern as being able to provide services. Thus, Theed and Coronet continue their trade as entertainment healing centers.

Quote from: Raph
Combat focused players are going to dislike this, they want to get back to doing what they enjoy doing. It's the "I wanna solo!" thing writ large, is all.

Somewhat.

Combat focused players want to continually fight, or at least fight within a time frame entirely defined by themselves. They don't want battle fatigue or wounds nor accept the explanation that both are endemic to a cross-functioning player society. They want to be in the field, fighting the world or each other and dragging along the health packs or healers to be called upon when needed. They're trained by EQ-like games that let them do this.

One obvious recurring result in these games is bots. Some professions compel it more than others. A Master Musician has "less to do" than a Master BH. While that's not technically true, the former is more defined by abstract self-directed pursuits than the latter, which has all sorts of ingame faucets from which to receive goals. Yet MMs perform a critical function (BF, mind wounds and buffing) to combat templates like MBH+(whatever). And combatants think on two levels: "The Best" or "Not the best". Why see anyone else but a Master Doc or a Master Musician for buffs? The result is predictable: bots.

Combatants may also want to solo, but that's not guaranteed. Anyone who wants an EQ Epic or SWG Mandalorian armor or to hit a CoH Task Force knows they'll be doing these things with other players. Other's who want to solo EQ, SWG or CoH can do so, as long as they accept the limitations there as in all games.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 12, 2004, 06:37:57 AM
Quote from: Stray
I wonder: If both options (loot/NPC Vendors vs. crafting/player economy) were available in the same game, where both paths could grant the same items, would there still be many who chose to trade with other players? Would there be anyone who played a crafter for "fun"? I'd like to see how important a player economy is then.

EQ, UO and DAoC prove this out. You can craft great stuff or you can buy it, and you can be both a crafter and a hunter either by virtue of having crafting linked to a combat template (EQ and DAoC) or with multi-character servers (UO).

What they've shown is what I think we've all known all along:

There are a hell of a lot more Hunter types than Crafter types.

That's fine though. Even SWG recognizes this. There is maybe 1 armorsmith for every 200 players out there. Back in the beginning, people were bitching about how many crafters there were. That was simply because the system was new and interesting. While still click-and-play, the decisions made on the front end (resources and economic) as well as backend (experimentation and economics) makes SWG crafting more relevant than that of EQ and DAoC.

But there are still way many more people who'd rather hunt.

A good system incorporates not only both crafters and hunters, but understands the ratio between them.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Arcadian Del Sol on July 12, 2004, 06:41:12 AM
broken economies are NOT largely attributable to dupe bugs or other bad code. They are always always always the result of a system that allows for the alchemistry of unlimited, non-depriciating realm coins, and a complete lack of anything depriciable and costly to spend them on.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Lum on July 12, 2004, 07:17:48 AM
Well, if there was ever proof needed as to my idiocy, jumping into this thread is probably it. That being said:

Every MMO economy is false. Duh. Trust me, you don't want a real economy in an MMO. It will, with stunning rapidity, result in a tyranny of a very small minority. Much like, well, real economies.

Quote
EQ, UO and DAoC prove this out. You can craft great stuff or you can buy it, and you can be both a crafter and a hunter either by virtue of having crafting linked to a combat template (EQ and DAoC) or with multi-character servers (UO).


The problem with the typical MMO economic model is that crafting items compete with dropped items. Literally: crafters are in competition with the items that world builders are crafting to make hunting attractive. The problem is that one "faction" in this equation is always losing; either craftsmen complain (justifiably) that the results of their labors are marginalized because the Shiny New Sword from Deepest Dungeon is better than anything they make, or everyone else complains (justifiably) that the stuff they're getting from monsters is worthless, because it isn't as good as the stuff crafters are making.

The SWG model (I don't know if anyone else has as radical an economy so let's use them as an example) is that players make everything. Boom, the end. Well, that certainly solves a lot of problems. It also makes a lot of people who are used to the kill-things-and-get-stuff metaphor (a metaphor, I might add, that is not unique to MMOs) unhappy. The economy may be far more realistic than most (in that it has a working model of supply and demand and requires a bit of resource management) but the guy who logs in for a couple hours to plink at things with a blaster is either going to be (a) twinked or (b) unhappy, because the player economy has progressed past a point where the artificial elements (quests, drops from monsters, etc) can keep up.

The same thing happens in kill-things-get-stuff games, of course; try playing EQ or DAOC for a couple hours, then taking the money you've made and buying anything in the player markets. You'll find that the money you've made is an order of magnitude lower than anything you can buy - again, because the player economy has detached itself from the artificial one. However, in the kill-things-get-stuff game you can concievably live completely apart from the player economy - existing off of quest rewards, items that you've looted yourself, etc.

In an economy that is solely player driven (which, for reasons I'm about to demonstrate, very few actually exist), you don't have that option. Your choices become - hmm, what low level menial tasks that other, richer players don't want to do can I do that will give me a small amount of income, or what higher level players can I swear myself out to. Congratulations! You've created a feudal society! From an economic standpoint, it's an accomplishment.  From a standpoint of whether or not it is fun, not so much.

Now, I'm an advocate of, for lack of a better word, socialist tinkering in MMOs. (The spectacle of a radical libertarian in real life working towards the implementation of socialism never fails to amuse me, by the way.) There are things game creators can do to "tinker" with the economy that can create interesting challenges without completely making the game NotFun. Just for one example: track the total amount of money in your game (call it "M1" for giggles) and key the value of your prestige gold sinks off of that. Since, after all, the target of your prestige gold sinks is to soak some of the money out of the bank vaults of your wealthiest few, why not REALLY target them? Make the process transparent. Display the rise and fall of these prices (key it to in-game stock markets for even more fun). Watch your players game down the prices by flushing money out of their vaults... which is what you wanted to happen in the first place.

However, the significant portion of your playerbase that ISN'T level 50 RR10 or a Master Jedi or whatever isn't a member of your player economy. More to the point, they don't WANT to be, most of the time. They want to benefit from the economy, sure. Cheap stuff on the market? Yeah, gimme! Actually working to generate a small amount of value relative to their "worth" in the game world? Oh HELL no. At that point it becomes a job. And most of us already have one of those.

So the trick becomes allowing participation in the economy, without forcing full membership. Hm.


Title: False Economies
Post by: destro on July 12, 2004, 09:29:43 AM
Interesting. Part of this thread appears to have become polarised between the more intellectual players and devs and those of more… modest ambitions, who view having to engage in trade with other players as an imposition, an unwelcome distraction from their real business of killing mobs or completing missions to get their loot.

The most striking thing about this is its similarity to players complaining about the inclusion of player-vs-player combat in games like UO. They use exactly the same lines. “I want to play a game about X, why should I be forced to play a game about Y, which only appeals to a minority?”

Yes, children, and vanilla is America’s favourite flavour. Why are other parts of the game ‘niche’? Because everybody kills mobs from time to time. PKs do it, crafters do it, social types do it a lot because it gives you something to do other than stand around while talking. PvM is a majority made up of minorities, and the smallest minority of all may well be the hardcore PvM crowd who don’t want any sort of interaction with other players – violent or economic – to distract them from pushing the lever and getting their pellet. Because alone of all the types of MMOG player, these players have no reason to play MMOGs.

They only want to interact with other players in order to group, and they only want to interact with the world in order to kill monsters and collect loot. If that’s what you want to do, fine, but why pay a monthly fee? Any other game with levels and cooperative multiplayer would be far more suitable.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Raph on July 12, 2004, 09:46:26 AM
Quote from: stray
Quote from: Raph
Hmm, I think that one thing that people who want to just axe economies are misisng is that economies can and DO provide gameplay. There's strategic gameplay, large-scale cooperation gameplay, PvP gameplay, and other types of gameplay that kill-the-foozle doesn't offer.


It may be gameplay, but it's kinda niche. Why force everyone to play a game that only appeals to a minority?


Dude, niche? Across all games as a whole, it's probably more popular than all the forms of combat combined.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Arcadian Del Sol on July 12, 2004, 10:02:08 AM
"You can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself." - Hank Williams.

Looking at economics with an historical eye somewhat slanted by patriotism, the Free Market systems seem to stand alone as the only systems that work; wherein the whole of the community is not eventually reduced to starving cave dwellers hoping they can hide from the big toothy lions.

But what this thread seems to be asking for is a detail rich MMOG economic system that employs the concepts from just about every failed economic experiment in human history - and expects them to somehow succeed where countless civilizations before have failed.

Raph and Lum: please to be making a game with an "each one according to their needs and each one according to their means" economic system that doesn't end up losing a Cold War 80 years later to an opposing system based mostly on the "finders keepers" rule. Thank you.

I wont be holding my breath because I'm afraid the toothy lions will hear me gasping.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Nyght on July 12, 2004, 10:23:18 AM
Quote from: Raph
Dude, niche? Across all games as a whole, it's probably more popular than all the forms of combat combined.


Wow, thats quite a statement. Now I largely play a crafter in games that offer the opportunity to craft but I find this very counterintuitive to what a lot of us feel we observe.

Given that you have numbers that we don't, I'll take your word for it, but can we know the context of 'all games'?


Title: False Economies
Post by: daveNYC on July 12, 2004, 11:00:17 AM
Quote from: destro
Interesting. Part of this thread appears to have become polarised between the more intellectual players and devs and those of more… modest ambitions, who view having to engage in trade with other players as an imposition, an unwelcome distraction from their real business of killing mobs or completing missions to get their loot.

I think it's more that player's don't want to be dependent on other players.  If you just leveled out of some equipment and need to buy some replacements before you get to go adventuring again, you'd be pretty pissed if you found out that you couldn't buy it from an NPC, and no players who were on had any available.

Make two economies.  Make a PC and an NPC centric economy, and make the NPC one less efficient.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Lum on July 12, 2004, 11:18:56 AM
Quote from: destro
Part of this thread appears to have become polarised between the more intellectual players and devs and those of more… modest ambitions


If I weren't of such modest ambition, I'd think I was being called an idiot here because I disagreed with you. Thanks!

Quote from: destro
The most striking thing about this is its similarity to players complaining about the inclusion of player-vs-player combat in games like UO. They use exactly the same lines. “I want to play a game about X, why should I be forced to play a game about Y, which only appeals to a minority?”


Because it's a leisure activity that they are paying for, not a participation-required thought experiment.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Lum on July 12, 2004, 11:21:30 AM
Quote from: Nyght
Quote from: Raph
Dude, niche? Across all games as a whole, it's probably more popular than all the forms of combat combined.


Wow, thats quite a statement. Now I largely play a crafter in games that offer the opportunity to craft but I find this very counterintuitive to what a lot of us feel we observe?


Yeah, not quite sure what Raph is talking about, but active crafters-as-profession crafters driving an economy (as opposed to people who make stuff to be self-sufficient thus removing themselves from the economy) are a very, very small minority. Vocal, sure. Necessary, absolutely (SOMEONE has to make the funny hats). But tiny.


Title: False Economies
Post by: destro on July 12, 2004, 11:33:45 AM
Lum wrote:

Because it's a leisure activity that they are paying for, not a participation-required thought experiment.

A perfectly good answer, but I explained in the following paragraph why the question was based on false premises. They aren't being forced to play SWG if what they really want to play is something more like CoH, and they aren't being denied any game which fits their playstyle because mob-bashing is the one feature which is almost universally implemented. Nor is the game pandering to a minority by including multiple sub-games, since most players will be interested in at least one sub-game in addition to killing mobs - whether PvP, crafting, social activity or what have you.

If I weren't of such modest ambition, I'd think I was being called an idiot here because I disagreed with you. Thanks!

I don't know where you got the idea that I was referring to you. Just because my post was near yours does not mean it was in response to yours, and I agree with much of what you said - certainly that people who aren't interested in being crafters and businessmen should not be forced into being crafters or businessmen.

Was I saying that the two people earlier in the thread who complained that any sort of trade with other players was an unacceptable distraction from quests and hunting are idiots? You may well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Lum on July 12, 2004, 11:43:57 AM
Quote
They aren't being forced to play SWG if what they really want to play is something more like CoH


So the flip side, then is that you want them out of your game, I presume, and thus you want a game written for you. Fair enough. So do I. Preferably one involving my ruling an Eastern European country with my iron fist of death.

My point is aimed more at the general behavioral patterns of most players, who would violently recoil at having to participate in a feudal economy as a serf.

[edited to expound a bit further] The problem is that all examples of working MMO player economies ARE feudal in nature. This isn't necessarily bad. It took mankind thousands of years to get TO feudalism, and it took mankind another five hundred years to move past it. However, given the parts of human nature that are currently modelled in online gaming (greed and empire building, mainly), it's not surprising that we've moved to that point in development. In almost every large scale MMO, you have groups of people who combine to achieve a goal. Those groups are larger than their parts. And in some games those groups are required to "win". Thus, membership in those groups are seen as a commodity.

Commodities aren't given away (unless you have a pre-existing social relationship outside the game) - they are traded. You have to have something to trade. For players new to the game/genre (and for the sake of the industry we have to concern ourselves with these precious treasures) the only thing they have to trade is their time, or however the game allows them to trade in that time.

That in a nutshell is every player-run economy to date. Large cartels who farm citizens of lesser status for whatever the game has artificially given them to offer, in return for as little as those cartels can get away with offering in return.

That's interesting from a sociological standpoint. My point is that it isn't particularly fun, unless you are the .05% of the playerbase actually running the cartels. Thus, for the sake of fun, the "pure player-run economy" is intefered with. Whether through "look! that small rat was carrying a sword! Or 34 credits!" or otherwise. Because being a cog in a large machine gets kinda old.


Title: False Economies
Post by: ajax34i on July 12, 2004, 11:47:36 AM
Quote from: Lum
Quote from: destro
Part of this thread appears to have become polarised between the more intellectual players and devs and those of more… modest ambitions


If I weren't of such modest ambition, I'd think I was being called an idiot here because I disagreed with you. Thanks!


Actually, there seem to be three categories:  intellectual players, devs, and, uh, idiots.  I wonder if the "devs" group is half-way on the implied intelligence scale (which would put them at the "normal person" rating), or if they're a totally separate group that he didn't want to insult.  There's no comma ("polarized between intellectual players and devs, and idiots" vs. "polarized between intellectual players, and devs and idiots"), so we'll never know.


Title: False Economies
Post by: destro on July 12, 2004, 12:04:04 PM
Lum wrote:

So the flip side, then is that you want them out of your game, I presume, and thus you want a game written for you.

Not at all. I play CoH. I merely object to the suggestion that all games should be CoH.

My point is aimed more at the general behavioral patterns of most players, who would violently recoil at having to participate in a feudal economy as a serf.

Players seem quite happy to take entirely menial fetch-and-carry tasks from NPCs and mission terminals. They want to be given simple jobs to do with immediate rewards. Does it really matter whether the missions on the terminal come from another player rather than an NPC?

What it really comes down to is not whether the players are working for other players or NPCs, but whether the gameplay involved is any fun.

Edit: I find your MMOG socialism as amusing as you do, but I don't have time to comment on it just now.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Raph on July 12, 2004, 12:05:31 PM
Quote from: Lum
Quote from: Nyght
Quote from: Raph
Dude, niche? Across all games as a whole, it's probably more popular than all the forms of combat combined.


Wow, thats quite a statement. Now I largely play a crafter in games that offer the opportunity to craft but I find this very counterintuitive to what a lot of us feel we observe?


Yeah, not quite sure what Raph is talking about, but active crafters-as-profession crafters driving an economy (as opposed to people who make stuff to be self-sufficient thus removing themselves from the economy) are a very, very small minority. Vocal, sure. Necessary, absolutely (SOMEONE has to make the funny hats). But tiny.


That playstyle is also the playstyle of games from The Sims to the Tycoon games to Civ. It's spreadsheets-as-gaming, as opposed to action gaming. It's not a small portion of the market, not by a long shot, and it tends to be a more female and mainstream audience.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Nebu on July 12, 2004, 12:15:23 PM
Quote from: Raph
That playstyle is also the playstyle of games from The Sims to the Tycoon games to Civ. It's spreadsheets-as-gaming, as opposed to action gaming. It's not a small portion of the market, not by a long shot, and it tends to be a more female and mainstream audience.


Given the limited success and niche community surrounding atitd, I'm surprised that you would say such a thing.  Atitd incorporates much of what is found in the Sid Meier "spreadsheets-as-games" titles, but never achieved the success given the audience you describe.  Granted, the manner in which the in-game mechanics were implemented could have something to do with it.  

I loved the Sid Meier games and played them for hours rabidly.  When economic simulation or "spreadsheets-as-games" got moved to a more social venue (i.e. atitd), I found that some of the appeal was lost.  I think that an mmog economy must be tied to a game with wider appeal to have success of a greater scale.  SWG, DAoC, EQ, etc. all offer crafting in addition to combat, exploration, and questing.  Having the opportunity to enjoy multiple tasks (or progression pathways) within the same environment helps diversify the player base.  I think this is also a key to stabilizing an economy.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HaemishM on July 12, 2004, 12:18:52 PM
Quote from: Lum
That in a nutshell is every player-run economy to date. Large cartels who farm citizens of lesser status for whatever the game has artificially given them to offer, in return for as little as those cartels can get away with offering in return.


I think it should be considered a small measure of success for fantasy-based games to have risen or achieved the level of a feudal economy. I personally think that makes of fantasy-based MMOG's should try to achieve nothing more than that, because since the entire goddamn fantasy genre which we base these MMOG's off of is in itself based in a time period of feudal society. Thus, art imitates life, or something.

What fucks it all up, creating whiners of the most refined sort, is that we are living in a free market society (for the most part), in which the individual is held as his own sub-deity. What the individual wants is oftentimes more important than the needs of society. This is, of course, in ABSOLUTE AND TOTAL DIAMETRIC OPPOSITION to the entire concept of a feudal society, which only sees those of noble birth as a sub-deity imbued with the divine right of doing whatever-the-fuck-they-want.

Hell, even Star Wars is essentially a feudal system, with kings and knights and such; it just has a veneer of sci-fi thanks to blasters that go "pyew pyew!"

If DAoC and EQ and the other feudal fantasy games have an economy that is mostly feudal, they have succeeded. Call it a day.

I still say that in order to have anything approaching a "real economy" that is player-driven (whatever that means), you will have winners and losers, and lots more of the latter. If you don't, your economy is fucked, because it means supply is too plentiful and demand is met perfectly. That creates too many players with "dead money" as Dundee put it.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Lum on July 12, 2004, 12:19:59 PM
I'd go a bit further and note that "Civ Online" would be considerably less fun if everyone were a Settler.

An MMO strategy game would be loads of fun if done right, but nothing remotely like this has been brought to market yet, so not entirely sure how relevant it is :)


Title: False Economies
Post by: Dundee on July 12, 2004, 02:05:38 PM
Quote from: destro
Not at all. I play CoH. I merely object to the suggestion that all games should be CoH.


Funny, earlier in the thread, I thought that was your position.

i.e. If you can't do an economy right, and you obviously can't, then don't do one at all.

And since you used CoH as an example, which does use a faucet-sink-drain economy, and even allows buying, selling and trading items for 'currency'... that kinda only leaves one element of an economy in the bullseye:  Crafting.

So, I thought (or came to think, as this thread grew), your key point was something like:

If you can't implement crafting without making the game less fun for all the people whom are not crafters, then don't implement crafting at all.

'Course, your original article went off to discuss duping, dynamic economies, developer incompetence, destroyed economies, etc. and now people are talking about all sorts of things... but I think if you stuck to the one point, wrote an essay about that, it'd be more difficult to argue against.

I suppose, you might be saying that crafting could be fun for non-crafters if the economy were more like a real-world economy (in some ways, at least), but since it's not then, it isn't, and should just be omitted.

But is that really your point, or am I just mis-reading you?

'Cause I dunno.  I still think it's generally, typically even, worthwhile to include a crafting system, and support for merchant-oriented players, in the form of player vendors, shops, etc.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 12, 2004, 02:11:52 PM
The Civ-online reference is notable because of The Sims. Far and away the number one best selling game of all time (including the expansion packs). However, how much of a "game" is it? How much of a game was SimCity before it? I see a game very much a screensaver orders of magntitude more boring than Eve, only fun when I can use a cheat code. But that doesn't mean we can ignore the millions of units sold (rare even as that is for solo games).

I totally agree that this may largely be irrelevant in online games though. Solo gamers get the benefit of playing the very God any massive multiplayer is constantly balanced to prevent. And if you can't play God as defined by a game like The Sims, how fun can it be?

As to the fun of tossing Excel spreadsheets around? People don't mind numbers if it gets them closer to their ability to be the snot out of whatever moves.

Quote from: daveNYC
I think it's more that player's don't want to be dependent on other players

Ya. People pay for the opportunity to interact, but they want to do that on their own time.

Having said that though, SWG's economy is not that hard for the average player to get. What falls down is the interface, which is non-intuitive. Back during beta, the Bazaar terminals mistakenly listed items from player vendors in the Region/World/Galaxy. I never got why this was a mistake though. It should be advertised that players must seek other players for their goods. They can buy local on the bazaar when 6k credits is a lot of money, or they can easily see what city/town/building is going to support them the best.

SWG requires player interdependency, but not like EQ, which made it a curse phrase. I rarely, if ever, interact with the sellers of goods. Conversely, they're bound by basic economic principles that dictate the price of things. Players can charge whatever the heck they want, but if they're are ignorant of market forces, they will be ignored by that potential market.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HRose on July 12, 2004, 02:45:49 PM
The first Lum's post pretty much explained all I would have hoped to conclude. I also read the last line as "the economic system should be a mean and not the end". And, as I said, you need exactly to control the economy so that it doesn't become too important to require you to focus on it.

For the rest I'll comment randomly since I agree with what has been said and I have just a pair of points to add.

Quote from: Lum
Yeah, not quite sure what Raph is talking about, but active crafters-as-profession crafters driving an economy (as opposed to people who make stuff to be self-sufficient thus removing themselves from the economy) are a very, very small minority. Vocal, sure. Necessary, absolutely (SOMEONE has to make the funny hats). But tiny.

In this case you still cannot deduce a rule from the actual trend. It's similar to the debate about PvP Vs. PvE. The trend is due to a precise history, like Raph said it's not a good idea to axe a path that has a big dormant potential.

Quote from: Raph
Does your game NEED it? No. But given that it is one of the axes of gameplay that makes use of persistence, and persistence is one of the key things these games offer that other games cannot , well, leaving it out may be considered to be at least underutilizing the genre. Not a bad thing if you have a specific other area of focus, but not the One True Way either.

Also, count the PvP players in DAoC, then count them in EQ. Different games, different play-styles. I imagine SWG is producing its own genre and play-style at the moment.

--

I also thought a bit about games like Sim City, since I like even that genre. The reasoning triggered a long list of thoughts spreading in many different ways that are impossible for me to replicate here but I focused at least an element that explains why I liked that kind of games:
- I loved being able to construct, to manage, to achieve something in a positive direction. I loved the progression.

What I consider the soul of the gameplay isn't, once again, the money (because money has *zero* value). But the USE of money to do something interesting. Interesting for me because it replicates the process of achievement and progression that I can find also in a simple treadmilled game. I mean that I don't find any difference between what I like in a managment game or in whack-a-monster. It's never about the money, it's about what you can do with the money.

The GUI reasoning, that Geldon did, applies to every game-type because even in whack-a-monster you need a fun GUI (or CoH would be shit). And then you also need a progression and a sense of "building" something. Exactly the reason why everyone feels, at a point, the lack of sense or of a community in CoH. The game is fun because the GUI is well planned, but then you also need a reason and a purpose for that GUI.

In a similar way an economic based game needs a fun GUI and an endgame or purpose. But wait a second: making a ton of money isn't an useful endgame. It's simply the most stupid thing that could happen.

The money has a value in the USE. In the real world peoples love the money because the money is the solidification of the contingence. The money can be transformed into ANYTHING. It could even transform you. And peoples, in this world, love beyond the limits the possibility. But, again, they still love the *consequence* of the money and perhaps even the money itself but just as the personification of that contingence.

Then what happens in a game? What brings you the fact that you have a ton of money? You, once again, need an endgame or a purpose. A way to translate the resource you have into something that you can desire and use.

Exactly at this point my reasoning flows in what Lum said. Often, even in a game, the money is a luxury in the hands of a few. If you start planning an endgame related to the few rich you will also wipe the most part of your playerbase, and piss them off. The whole purpose of the game (the progression) becomes an exclusive.

Since we are in a game, perhaps, we can develop other ways to make the game interesting. Without relying on an economic system that depends on restrictions (on the playerbase) and a degree of complexity really needing its own environment to feel right and compelling.

Quote from: Haemish
If DAoC and EQ and the other feudal fantasy games have an economy that is mostly feudal, they have succeeded. Call it a day.

Well, I don't think the purpose of these games is to replicate a believable medieval system. In particular I don't think you can brag about a game that rewards a few at the detriment of the most.

It's still a pay-service and the aim is to please everyone the best possible, trying to open up the best you can the access to more meat.

Re-iterating Lum:

Quote from: Lum
My point is that it isn't particularly fun, unless you are the .05% of the playerbase actually running the cartels. Thus, for the sake of fun, the "pure player-run economy" is intefered with.

Quote from: Arcadian Del Sol
Looking at economics with an historical eye somewhat slanted by patriotism, the Free Market systems seem to stand alone as the only systems that work

Huh? No. Free market never happened or the world would have collapsed in about two seconds or less.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HRose on July 12, 2004, 02:54:05 PM
Quote from: Dundee
'Cause I dunno.  I still think it's generally, typically even, worthwhile to include a crafting system, and support for merchant-oriented players, in the form of player vendors, shops, etc.

Not really. It strictly depends on the game and your aim. It can really produce a lot of problems for the current game since the two layers won't fit together if you haven't planned the game in advance with that model in mind.


Title: False Economies
Post by: geldonyetich on July 12, 2004, 03:26:54 PM
Quote from: Darniaq
Theed and Coronet have been the guaranteed cantinas since about two weeks after launch on all servers.

Add Mos Eisley to your list.   Perhaps it was that all the newbie players tend to start out in there, or perhaps it's because it was considered the "main starport" on the planet, but last I checked there was no shortage of entertainers in the Cantina there (that is, the one nearest the starport, not the other one which is the grounded frieghter).

I suspect there's an occupied Cantina near any Starport that is within close proximity.   (The Endor, Smuggler's camp area I was at was an exception probably because Endor is an expencive to visit wilderness sort of Planet.)

Quote from: Raph
That playstyle is also the playstyle of games from The Sims to the Tycoon games to Civ. It's spreadsheets-as-gaming, as opposed to action gaming. It's not a small portion of the market, not by a long shot, and it tends to be a more female and mainstream audience.

Well, if we're talking action vrs number crunching strategy, technically most MMORPG combat fits in the later catagory.   (MMOFPS like Planetside and WWII-online are something else.   MMORPGFPS like Neocron and (possibly) Jump to Lightspeed are something else entirely - a sort of a combination of sorts.)

Personally, I think an experiencied MMORPG player seeking combat isn't particularly seeking action.  Why would they?  MMORPGs combat is and always has been a slow real time conversion of a turn based system.   This translates to the number crunching strategy.

So what do they want?   I propose that an experienced MMORPG player seeking combat within a MMORPG is instead is seeking a sort of *excitement*.  

Granted, there's folks who find mercantile exchanges exciting, and there's folks who find exploration (even of a virtual world) exciting.    However, traditionally RPG combat mechanics have been there to create a source of conflict, and thus resulting conflictual excitement.    It comes down to *types* of excitement, and preferance between different players.

It's this conflictual excitement that combat oriented players want.    I think that these are the majority of RPG players - after all, D&D was borne upon the back of many slain kobolds.    

I also know that the Star Wars movies are greatly geared to create an expectation that there would be that kind of exictement offered.    So I was a little taken aback (as were many of us) when I discovered that SWG was going for the mercantile excitement approach.

Making combat exciting: Tall order, perhaps, but this is what I'm hoping will come about in a certain retooling and unrelated expansion...

Yes, this is related only to an economic discussion in that I'm pointing out that Economy is one kind of gameplay and Combat is entirely another.  I didn't bring it up, you'll note :)
Quote from: HRose
The money has a value in the USE. In the real world peoples love the money because the money is the solidification of the contingence. The money can be transformed into ANYTHING. It could even transform you. And peoples, in this world, love beyond the limits the possibility. But, again, they still love the *consequence* of the money and perhaps even the money itself but just as the personification of that contingence.

Good point here.  This is probably why we're naturally inclined to add money to any broad-reaching game model.   If one can leverage money properly, it'd make a fun game on it's own.   After all, that's the drive behind Monopoly (http://www.areyougame.com/interact/item.asp?itemno=HB00009) (which I hyperlink just to clarify I'm referring to the board game).

So I guess I'm just restating what Raph said a few messages back - Economies do add gameplay.    However, my point was just that they only add a *type* of gameplay that appeals to certain players.    Why develop a game that only appears to one type of player when MMORPGs can do better than that?


Title: False Economies
Post by: Dundee on July 12, 2004, 03:59:11 PM
Quote from: HRose
Quote from: Dundee
'Cause I dunno.  I still think it's generally, typically even, worthwhile to include a crafting system, and support for merchant-oriented players, in the form of player vendors, shops, etc.

Not really. It strictly depends on the game and your aim. It can really produce a lot of problems for the current game since the two layers won't fit together if you haven't planned the game in advance with that model in mind.


Yeh, I agree with that.


Title: False Economies
Post by: stray on July 12, 2004, 04:56:05 PM
Quote from: destro
They only want to interact with other players in order to group, and they only want to interact with the world in order to kill monsters and collect loot. If that’s what you want to do, fine, but why pay a monthly fee? Any other game with levels and cooperative multiplayer would be far more suitable.


Since I may be the "idiot" in question: It has nothing to do with not wanting to interact with other players. It's just a matter of preferred playstyle, one which becomes hindered with a lot of downtime and delay in a player economy. I don't want to play the "economy" just so I can excel at the combat elements. I could write a post 2 pages long about that if "intellectual" prowess is what you want, but it's pretty fucking simple, really.

It isn't about secluding myself either. Killing mobs, collecting loot, or doing quests isn't really my thing, but it's a good way to pass the time. But if I want gold and riches, what I prefer is stealing and killing from other players. If that's not "player interaction", then what is?


Title: False Economies
Post by: Raph on July 12, 2004, 05:00:33 PM
What is really the difference between the feudal model that Lum describes, and companies in the modern market? Leaving aside politically-influenced assessments such as "exploiting the newbs," it seems to me that it's going to be intrinsic to ANY network-based system, such as an economy, for it to develop in like fashion.

And yet, there's fun to be had at multiple levels of economy in the real world. Some people play with giant corporations and multimillion dollar budgets, and others run small coffeeshops. Why do we have to assume that only the guy at the top gets to have any fun? Is there not a scenario where being the guy in middle management is fun?

I knew someone would say "ah, combat is all about spreadsheets too." :) But I don't quite buy it.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HRose on July 12, 2004, 05:21:57 PM
Quote from: Raph
And yet, there's fun to be had at multiple levels of economy in the real world. Some people play with giant corporations and multimillion dollar budgets, and others run small coffeeshops. Why do we have to assume that only the guy at the top gets to have any fun? Is there not a scenario where being the guy in middle management is fun?

Now I'll say something cheap. I think Lum just continues a reasoning he did on his blog a few months ago. Developing content just for a minority doesn't seem a good choice. In general I think it's better to gather the players than segregate them in various parts of the game. It's one of the reasons why I like DAoC compared to SWG. The aim is shared and that builds a better sense of community than reproducing an actual believable society with different purposes.

It's like with the treadmill, the problem is that it puts lines between the players.

Then I'd also say that who's at the other side of the corporations doesn't run coffeeshops but just strives for life.

Quote from: Raph
I knew someone would say "ah, combat is all about spreadsheets too." :) But I don't quite buy it.


With the difference that combat is intuitive. There's an accessibility issue. Fighting in WoW is surely more player friendly than running a business.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 12, 2004, 05:31:03 PM
Combat is mostly about spreadsheets, but I raised the point to highlight the difference between players who suspend their disbelief and those who exploit their understanding of a system. This is particularly relevant in this feudal discussion. Some players think it's fun to harvest and sell resources, not knowing the role that puts them in. Others know it's grunt work but get to learn Small Business Economics 101 outside of staid academia and without any real risk. Some of the principles are actually the same. Learning can turn into "fun" when the reward is near-tactile.

Combat is no different. SWG, EQ, DAoC, CoH, doesn't matter. Players are constantly working numbers to ensure a better-than-50/50 shot in combat situations where they use player skill during at-the-moment decision making rounds.

The biggest difference between CoH and SWG is time. CoH resolves combat rounds much faster, mostly by virtue of having a less complicated combat system, rewarding players for quicker thinking, ala FPS games.

MMOFPS games aren't quite there yet, since so many obviously don't want to pay monthly fees for them. But I personally feel CoH is on the right track for the next generation of combat models. A better balance between meta- and micro-management.

Players want to be rewarded for what they're doing and not just watch the results of decisions they made weeks and months ago.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Raph on July 12, 2004, 05:51:21 PM
Quote from: HRose

Now I'll say something cheap. I think Lum just continues a reasoning he did on his blog a few months ago. Developing content just for a minority doesn't seem a good choice. In general I think it's better to gather the players than segregate them in various parts of the game. It's one of the reasons why I like DAoC compared to SWG. The aim is shared and that builds a better sense of community than reproducing an actual believable society with different purposes.

It's like with the treadmill, the problem is that it puts lines between the players.

Then I'd also say that who's at the other side of the corporations doesn't run coffeeshops but just strives for life.


In answer to the first point, isn't another way to look at it that having all the players doing one activity simply segregates the other players out of the game entirely?

In the second point, striving for life is central to the Sims, for example. I really don't think that because something is unfun in real life, it must be unfun in a game. For one, the game really isn't going to mimic to a full level of detail. I am pretty sure that tremendously unfun activities (like, say, swordfighting orcs that want to kill you and eat your flesh) can be made fun in game contexts.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HRose on July 12, 2004, 05:57:22 PM
Quote from: Darniaq
MMOFPS games aren't quite there yet, since so many obviously don't want to pay monthly fees for them.

Uhm, completely different topic but you don't think that FPS are more tiring? I can expect to play an RPG for a few hours but I really cannot with an FPS, it needs too much attention focus.

Then there's also the fact that FPS is equal to PvP and so the less progression there is, the better. The gameplay is about reflex and hand coordination (plus PC hardware) and you don't want any treadmill to mess at that point.


Title: False Economies
Post by: destro on July 12, 2004, 06:09:10 PM
Dundee wrote:

Funny, earlier in the thread, I thought that was your position.

i.e. If you can't do an economy right, and you obviously can't, then don't do one at all.


You’re confusing two separate points I made – my article discussed the idea of an economy without a cash faucet, where low-level crafters are given money and things to do by the higher level ones, who in turn are working toward building up art collections (as many do now) and constructing massive, unique projects.

I did not say that this was a realistic economic simulation, only that it includes aspects of a real-world economy which are potentially dynamic and entertaining. When there isn’t a cash faucet commodity trading becomes more important, because players have to make a choice about which resource to harvest. If you have a money tree the answer is usually the same: Money.

When I said ‘implement no economy’ I was playing devil’s advocate; suggesting that using the old faucet-sink model constituted sitting on the fence between ‘no economy’ and something more dynamic and, yes, realistic.

And don’t pout. I’ve already said that I like SWG’s economy. Only three things disappointed me: The cash from mission terminals came out of  a faucet and not from other players; when people fill their bazaar slots they set up vendors, and when they set up vendors they come to Theed spaceport and spam like motherfuckers; and finally, the lack of anything really tempting to spend my hypothetical big pile of cash on in the endgame.

And since you used CoH as an example, which does use a faucet-sink-drain economy, and even allows buying, selling and trading items for 'currency'...

I don’t think what CoH has can be considered an economy, although there’s probably more trading of enhancements at the higher levels.

If you can't implement crafting without making the game less fun for all the people whom are not crafters, then don't implement crafting at all.

Certainly a relevant point to the thread, but it’s not mine. I like games with a lot of different things to do, so I’ll accept compromises to one kind of gameplay for the sake of including other kinds.

'Course, your original article went off to discuss duping, dynamic economies, developer incompetence, destroyed economies, etc. and now people are talking about all sorts of things... but I think if you stuck to the one point, wrote an essay about that, it'd be more difficult to argue against.

That’s absolutely true. Why didn’t I do it? Because it’s not my intention to make one point and hammer it home. If I have some thoughts about MMOG economies they need to be discussed before I know which are the good ones.

The idea that a good economy uses an endless supply of newbies as cheap labour? Bad idea, shot down. The idea that the homogenity of cash is a cause of duping? Wrong again, although a finite number of individual bills with unique serial numbers would no doubt make it easier to detect.

But cash as a token of exchange rather than a farmable resource, large-scale crafting projects to tempt wealthy players into spending? Those I still feel have merit.


Title: False Economies
Post by: destro on July 12, 2004, 06:15:05 PM
stray wrote:

Since I may be the "idiot" in question: It has nothing to do with not wanting to interact with other players. It's just a matter of preferred playstyle, one which becomes hindered with a lot of downtime and delay in a player economy. I don't want to play the "economy" just so I can excel at the combat elements. I could write a post 2 pages long about that if "intellectual" prowess is what you want, but it's pretty fucking simple, really.

It isn't about secluding myself either. Killing mobs, collecting loot, or doing quests isn't really my thing, but it's a good way to pass the time. But if I want gold and riches, what I prefer is stealing and killing from other players. If that's not "player interaction", then what is?


So, to clarify, you don’t want your playstyle hindered by having to buy things off crafters, but you do want to be able to hinder the playstyle of crafters by killing them and taking their ore?


Title: False Economies
Post by: HRose on July 12, 2004, 06:19:22 PM
Quote from: Raph
In answer to the first point, isn't another way to look at it that having all the players doing one activity simply segregates the other players out of the game entirely?

Uhm, I don't think I understand. If everyone is involved with the same endgame or purpose you don't have "other" players out of the system because the system already includes everyone. If you mean that the crafting type player is excluded I'd say that I still don't believe on player types because the style is a simple consequence of a particular game and not the cause of it (like designing a game aimed to a precise audience).

Quote
In the second point, striving for life is central to the Sims, for example. I really don't think that because something is unfun in real life, it must be unfun in a game. For one, the game really isn't going to mimic to a full level of detail. I am pretty sure that tremendously unfun activities (like, say, swordfighting orcs that want to kill you and eat your flesh) can be made fun in game contexts.

Well, that's true. But then everyone wants to be a "Jedi". In the real life you are more or less resigned to stay where you are because there's not much you can do. In a game everyone pays the same and if you build a treadmill between the players it will be hardly seen as a good thing.

It's always a problem to make your players accept the divisions you are forcing on them. It's not that the bottom on the ladder is unfun. It's that it is less fun than the top.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Raph on July 12, 2004, 06:20:26 PM
So, Darniaq, the question will become what happens when you add more skill into the mix, and people find that they cannot cut it. I think MMOs look very different when the average player cannot level past the midpoint of the advancement ladder, for example.

Is that the right way to go? I don't know. I appreciate the value of having greater skill, and certainly we've educated the current MMOG audience to the point where greater skill levels need to be demanded by the game systems.

At the same time, I no longer play RTSes because they're just too complicated for me. The minimum skill level has gone up.

So how do we manage that problem as we increase the amount of skill needed to succeed even in PvE?


Title: False Economies
Post by: stray on July 12, 2004, 07:54:34 PM
Quote from: destro
So, to clarify, you don’t want your playstyle hindered by having to buy things off crafters, but you do want to be able to hinder the playstyle of crafters by killing them and taking their ore?


Sure. If it was a pure player economy, why not? Since they're able to grief me, I should be allowed to supply a little grief back their way too. Nothing about the "economy", especially a capitalist one, tells me it should be a utopia, with one set of rules to advance by. If the simulation of everything from corporations to coffee shops is going to be implemented, it's only fair and realistic to also make room for the Henry Hills of the world.

That's irrelevant though. I never advocated a pure player economy in an open pvp system. Being rewarded for defeating players who want to play the same game as me is good enough.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 12, 2004, 08:16:38 PM
Quote from: Raph
I think MMOs look very different when the average player cannot level past the midpoint of the advancement ladder, for example

I am the average player. Skills alone don't keep me in a game. FPSes are just as niche as pure stats-based RPGs. Both are decidedly unfriendly to casual players, which is why I feel this convergence of both is ushering in the future of MMOGs.

However, players want to be more than just the sum total of their stats. Skills can help this. Combat Styles in DAoC, specials in SWG, CoH's and SB's fast combat rounds, all of these contribute realtime decision-making to a stats-based system, making the games more involving for the players on a moment-by-moment basis.

The system can grow as they already do: more options. More positional combat styles, more active and reactive powers, more ways to recognize and exploit vulnerabilities and more ways to customize the dispensing of power, smarter mob AI. Additionally, I'd wager heavily that players would have more fun fighting other players will skills than with spreadsheets.

I don't see an all-or-nothing approach being anything but niche. Being "just" an RPG or "just" an FPS, RTS or Sim game means the target market is solidly defined. Better to offer balance to ensure the game doesn't end up focusing on one playstyle too much.

Jump to Lightspeed is going to attempt just that it seems. If players don't like it, instead of them shying away from a skills-based game, they're free to shy away from a part of the game in which they find fun elsewhere already.

And all of this exists outside of the parameters of the economy, which means any control system can feed well into it.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Raph on July 12, 2004, 10:49:48 PM
Ah, OK. The "both present in the world" or even "many different mixtures of skill and stats present in the world" makes far more sense to me than what I thought you were saying, which sounded like "add more and more skill until the stats are choked out." I agree with you.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Dundee on July 13, 2004, 12:52:48 AM
Quote from: destro
And don’t pout.


And don't pout?


Title: False Economies
Post by: AOFanboi on July 13, 2004, 02:47:29 AM
Quote from: Arcadian Del Sol
Looking at economics with an historical eye somewhat slanted by patriotism, the Free Market systems seem to stand alone as the only systems that work;

Is that patriotic as in U.S.A.? In that case, plz wake up to the reality that the U.S. is very protectionist in international trade. It slaps import tariffs on goods based on the "flavor-of-the-month" lobby group or voter segment. Its membership in the WTO seems more to be used for sabotage of world trade while it makes self-serving bilateral agreements with poor countries. Did I mention the free-trade-violating use of subsidies yet?

Internally, between the member states, there is perhaps free trade. But certainly not on a global scale: There is a large difference between what your Government says and what it does.


Title: False Economies
Post by: destro on July 13, 2004, 06:12:00 AM
Dundee wrote:

And don't pout?

You were sounding a little put out at thinking I was of the opinion that you can't run an economy. So I mentioned that, on the contrary, it's rather a good economy.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Sky on July 13, 2004, 06:39:52 AM
Quote from: Darniaq
I am the average player.

*cough*

I have to call bullshit. Don't make me call shenanigans.

You really don't want my thoughts on the thread beyond this, trust me. But claiming you are the average player is like me claiming I am. Preposterous.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Dark Vengeance on July 13, 2004, 07:21:49 AM
Quote from: destro
So, to clarify, you don’t want your playstyle hindered by having to buy things off crafters, but you do want to be able to hinder the playstyle of crafters by killing them and taking their ore?


Yeah. Players want to get rid of things that hinder their playstyle, and they don't care a whole hell of a lot about other players.

The non-PvP crowd wants to hinder the PvP playstyle, because that makes it easier and more enjoyable for them to hunt, craft, socialize, roleplay, etc. People are largely driven by self-interest. Amazing how that works, isn't it?

By the way, I'd just like to add that the sky is blue, the earth is round, and fire is hot. Let me know when we're done pointing out the obvious here, kthx.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 13, 2004, 07:33:42 AM
Quote from: Sky
You really don't want my thoughts on the thread beyond this, trust me. But claiming you are the average player is like me claiming I am. Preposterous.

Sky, without bringing our year-long disagreement into this, nor going into the most fundamental differences between our playstyles, I consider myself the average player as defined by Raph's statement here:
Quote from: Raph
I think MMOs look very different when the average player cannot level past the midpoint of the advancement ladder, for example.

I editted the original verbosity out of my reply to that, but since you asked, I'll include it:

I don't stick around in a boring XP grind just for the purposes of seeing what new foozle I can get around the next corner. I don't care. I know how to beat EQ, DAoC and so on. The games are not that complex. They just require a dedication I don't feel like making, partly because that dedication is predicated in time I don't feel like spending. The compulsion to achieve has never forced me to stay in games I don't enjoy. And I reserve the exclusive right to define "enjoy" however the hell I want, since it's different for everyone anyway, and different per game (What does the average SWG enjoy about SWG? What does the average EQ player enjoy about EQ?)

Since that's what I thought Raph meant, then I am the average (MMOG) player.

In general though, "Average (MMOG) player" and "Average gamer" are mutually exclusive. I am not an average gamer, mostly by virtue of being a longtime MMOG fanboi at all. These aren't deep or complex games but they require compulsions very different than single or free-multiplayer games. That's the biggest problem I have with the monthly fee PS and CoH want from me. I want to pop in and out of them for a month every three months, but I can only do that if I line up my monthly fees to ensure I'm paying only one at a time. That wouldn't be a problem if I was single and living alone. But that hasn't been the case in half a decade and hopefully won't be ever again.

So I'm forced to make financial decisions about fun. I'm used to that. I'm not going to become an amateur photographer or a car collector either. I don't have the money. And part of that financial decision is based on "is this fun right now"? That is something the average player considers regardless of the genre. It's just that MMOGs require them to think more deeply about an ongoing commitment.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Sky on July 13, 2004, 08:19:25 AM
You've levelled past the midpoint many times over in SWG, and I recall you had a high level bard in EQ. Soo...huh? Just because a few other games haven't captured your nebulous attention (:)), it doesn't change the fact that given an environment you enjoy, you will level beyond the midpoint of the advancement scheme.

I don't have any illusions that I'm not an average player, in fact, I should be totally ignored by developers because my ideas run counter to what is apparently popular in mmog gaming. All I'm saying is you should realize that you are not an average player, either. Average players (and yeah, I'm talking mmogs, not gaming in general) don't write long opinion pieces about the state of the genre, they don't pontificate over the virtual economies. They camp the motherloving foozle and ding.

Me? I don't want to be Elfstar anymore.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HaemishM on July 13, 2004, 09:38:06 AM
None of us on this board are "average players." The minute we started crusing message boards and thinking as much about the design of the MMOG systems as we did about the playing of the games themselves, we left the "average player" behind.

The average players don't read message boards, don't sift through spoiler sites, and quit the game with no fanfare whatsoever.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Raph on July 13, 2004, 10:06:31 AM
I meant literally "when the average player cannot level past the midpoint because the game gets too hard and starts demanding above-average to exceptional skill."


Title: False Economies
Post by: Arcadian Del Sol on July 13, 2004, 10:26:05 AM
Quote from: AOFanboi
Quote from: Arcadian Del Sol
Looking at economics with an historical eye somewhat slanted by patriotism, the Free Market systems seem to stand alone as the only systems that work;

Is that patriotic as in U.S.A.? In that case, plz wake up to the reality that the U.S. is very protectionist in international trade. It slaps import tariffs on goods based on the "flavor-of-the-month" lobby group or voter segment. Its membership in the WTO seems more to be used for sabotage of world trade while it makes self-serving bilateral agreements with poor countries. Did I mention the free-trade-violating use of subsidies yet?

Internally, between the member states, there is perhaps free trade. But certainly not on a global scale: There is a large difference between what your Government says and what it does.


you're the guy with the giant yellow protest/parade float, aren't you.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Fargull on July 13, 2004, 10:27:20 AM
Quote from: Raph
I meant literally "when the average player cannot level past the midpoint because the game gets too hard and starts demanding above-average to exceptional skill."


I like this sentence, but it also raises a good question.

Fun in a game generally involves a challenge.  Right now the challenge of most MMORPG's is time.  Time does not equal fun in my book.  'The Average Player', I would hazard to guess also thinks time does not equal fun.  What is challenging now?  Why have I not found a MMORPG that requires puzzle work, jumping skill, multiple routes to achieve a goal that does equate to challenge = time investment.  Most quests in MMORPG's are dumb, they are a grad 'D' movie dumb, and most if not all just involve time investment to complete.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Dark Vengeance on July 13, 2004, 10:28:29 AM
Quote from: HaemishM
The average players don't read message boards, don't sift through spoiler sites, and quit the game with no fanfare whatsoever.


Don't confuse "average" with "casual". I think lots of "average players" probably hit stratics looking for information. Though, I agree that most of them don't spend time on the boards, and certainly don't post.

By the same token, this community has always been a bit different (dare I say more sophisticated?) than the stratics crowd.

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............


Title: False Economies
Post by: ajax34i on July 13, 2004, 10:48:38 AM
But that's the thing, the average player WILL get past the midpoint, eventually, somehow, with help.

You're talking about, for example, if healing in EQ required IQ way above and beyond what's required now, due to perhaps clerics and other healing classes having many super-specialized spells, instead of the general purpose CH.  So that at any moment, it would take 1-5 seconds to DECIDE which damn spell to use.

In that case I'd guess that the average player bent on playing a healer would either:  level slowly and carefully by soloing, get powerlevelled, or read up on all the possible strategies and formulate a simplistic algorithm (if ogre then CH, if elf then SH, etc).

The problem is that it's difficult to tune "difficulty" after release, because the devs have to alter core gameplay (make formulas more complex, add a slew of spells and take others out, etc.).  Think about trying to make EQ more complex for the clerics:  they'd end up totally changing their spell lineup.

So you either guess the target demographic's "difficulty" rating, and hit it spot on, or you don't take the chance and design an "easy" game.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 13, 2004, 11:40:54 AM
Quote from: Sky
You've levelled past the midpoint many times over in SWG, and I recall you had a high level bard in EQ. Soo...huh?

Leveling in SWG is not leveling in EQ, as you well know. My Bard hit 47 (second highest was a 25 Druid) in the same amount of time it took me to achieve three completely different templates in SWG (about 8 months). That's only a comparison I make now, but it's just based on a core truth (for me): templates and levels are not primary motivators. Oh I've gotten sucked into the grind like everyone else, but I do it only as long as my patience lasts, not until "the end". It's little wonder I've only hit the end game in UO and SWG. The power curves are way shallower (though SB R5 is a joke and DAoC have integrated some good content for folks who can /level to 20).

I'm not saying this to invent any sort of validation to my earlier point. Raph summed it up yet again:

Quote from: Raph
I meant literally "when the average player cannot level past the midpoint because the game gets too hard and starts demanding above-average to exceptional skill."

That works for most games. For MMOGs I'd just add "and starts demanding above-average motivation to complete a goal within a repetitious system simply because that goal is there".

I'm just a hobbiest. I get way into these things but unlike model building, I don't begin to enjoy it when I'm "done". There is no "done" in MMOGs. There is just staying ahead of the next nerf :)


Title: False Economies
Post by: Sky on July 13, 2004, 12:07:01 PM
Quote from: Raph
I meant literally "when the average player cannot level past the midpoint because the game gets too hard and starts demanding above-average to exceptional skill."

As noted, I've not seen much of a challenge ramp going up levels in various games, I don't consider any mmog to be 'difficult'. The timesink is what always gets me, because inevitably at some point my mind does the math...and I realize I have to kill 1250 more of these dumb orcs to ding and get my stupid new ability. I guess I'm not an achiever.

So that makes me above average? My EQ necro made it to lvl 54, but I stopped not because the game was hard, but because it was painfully punitive. One death set me back a literal month's worth of experience (lvl 1-51 took a year, lvl 51-54 took another year). I logged off and haven't looked back since, but not because the game was in any way difficult, quite the opposite, most of it was sitting around regenerating mana.

Can we get some examples of games that get too hard to level past the midpoint? I'm not sure I understand your point.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 13, 2004, 12:16:36 PM
It's in the definition of "hard" :)


Title: False Economies
Post by: AOFanboi on July 13, 2004, 12:28:48 PM
Quote from: Arcadian Del Sol
you're the guy with the giant yellow protest/parade float, aren't you.

No, just a fan of a true free market - the kind that does not exist but is a nice dream.

Getting back on track: Crafting in medieval times was IIRC heavily controlled by guilds (read: not at all a free market). These both controlled who could practice, how many crafters should be per region - even prices. Mass manufacturing (industrialism) killed the guilds' power, and brought at least a freer market. But it's the guild power that's of interest for fantasy MMOGs.

Would it be an interesting gameplay feature if crafting was limited to those players accepted by said guilds (the guilds being player-run organizations), and crafting skills were tied directly to membership in such a guild? With price fixing and guild wars for all.

Food for thought, that's all.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HaemishM on July 13, 2004, 12:56:47 PM
Quote from: Raph
I meant literally "when the average player cannot level past the midpoint because the game gets too hard and starts demanding above-average to exceptional skill."


And I understand you were trying to say that adding player skill in a game will lead to this problem quoted above. As has been said before, We ain't there yet, and there is a LONG goddamn way off. Because MMOG's do not challenge players, they challenge patience. EVERY SINGLE ONE, and I'm including COH in that. CoH just happens to be the best at IMO, challenging player skill, without implementing PVP that is.

I look at MMOG's lately as the kind of ill-fated socialistic (yes, Marxist) attempts at world creation. Everyone starts equal, with no personal ownership involved. No man is greater than any other man (or woman).

Ain't it funny how the first things most players strive for in MMOG's is some measure of power or prestige to place him above his fellow man? Whether that be more money, better items, or higher levels of personal power or political power, ain't it funny how feudal style guilds and hierarchical power structures develop almost organically?

There's a lesson in there.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Raph on July 13, 2004, 01:09:54 PM
Actually, I think we HAVE seen examples of it. Among them, I would include Puzzle Pirates, Planetside, WW2O, Air Warrior, Second Life, and There.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HaemishM on July 13, 2004, 02:48:40 PM
Quote from: Raph
Actually, I think we HAVE seen examples of it. Among them, I would include Puzzle Pirates, Planetside, WW2O, Air Warrior, Second Life, and There.


Trumped by games I would never play for TEH WIN.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 13, 2004, 04:36:42 PM
But they are emerging concepts that appeal to gamers disinterested in what has so far been proven to be financially viable pursuits. At worst, they'll have core followings that keep them niche. At best though, their best features will be ripped off for inclusion in games with some actual marketable equity behind them.

Like, Planetside battlefields in SWG perhaps :)


Title: False Economies
Post by: CmdrSlack on July 13, 2004, 05:39:01 PM
What works about CoH is that the level of skill v. numbers is pretty well-done.  Even with the numbers game to your advantage, not knowing how to most effectively use powers will result in an untimely trip to the hospital.

Having not levelled a toon past lv 22ish, I can't speak for the time investment to be expected in the higher levels, but I'm guessing it will be somewhere shy of EQ, but still time-involved.  And that's the key to lots of these games, spending time.  It has nothing to do with actual difficulty, just artificial difficulty created by slower xp curves.  

SWG does an interesting job of having eleventybillion xp types, which makes the skill gain seem less painful, yet time is still a huge factor.  

In both games, I can see where enjoyment of the game world, any community aspects, and the underlying mechanics is going to be what retains players who may achieve the "end game" status at some point.

While I found SWG's economy compelling, it became a job.  I rather like the CoH "economy" (for lack of a better word).  I'll be in a zone running around and see someone selling an enhancer I'd like.  If the price is right, perhaps I'll buy it.  Could you graft an economy similar to that of SWG onto a game like CoH?  Sure.  You could have crafting of devices and such for technology and natural origin characters. You could have similar crafting of mutation and science origin chemical processes and genetic modifications.  Magic origins could create focus items and whatnot.  All of these things could be sold to other players who choose not to spend their time crafting.  

But what would be the overall point?  

You would still end up with those who love to craft and those who loved to craft until it became a job.  

It would be really interesting to see what you could do with some kind of players hiring players structure/crafting guild structure like mentioned earlier.  Yes, you'd have the big guy vs. the little guy -- so someone would have to be a bottom, most likely without the courtesy of a reach-around.

But what about general strike?  Or organized labor?  I guess if you want to see economies progress beyond a feudal system, you need to give the have-nots certain in-game tools/mechanics to force the hand of the haves.  Industrial sabotage, haymarket riots, luddites, etc.  "We are the city, we can shut it down!" and whatnot.  Don't like the fact that Bigass Cartel_00 is keeping you down?  Destroy their main production facility.

It would certainly take a lot of player skill to pull off, albeit non-combat related (at least mostly).  The only problem is that no matter how involved you make them, game economies are entirely closed systems.  There's really no ROOM for revolutionary change based on the game code.  Even if you had your SWG version of the Wobblies or whatever, I don't think game tech is advanced enough to then truly change how the economy works.  You end up with the previous have-nots teaming up against the haves, then fighting it out with each other for control once they're free of the yoke of the former "oppressor."

Meh, I shouldn't post past the 10 consecutive studying hours mark.


Title: False Economies
Post by: geldonyetich on July 13, 2004, 06:21:26 PM
Quote from: Raph
So, Darniaq, the question will become what happens when you add more skill into the mix, and people find that they cannot cut it. I think MMOs look very different when the average player cannot level past the midpoint of the advancement ladder, for example.

Is that the right way to go? I don't know. I appreciate the value of having greater skill, and certainly we've educated the current MMOG audience to the point where greater skill levels need to be demanded by the game systems.

Yes, I know this was addressed to Darniaq but I wanted to butt in on the grounds that I was hinting at this at the bottom of page 1.

From what Raph's saying here, it is indeed a bit of a stumper: On one hand, people who feel they're no good at something are prone to get discouraged and find something else to do.  On the other hand, people should be encouraged to practice and get better.  

Boom: Can't trust people to play a game with skill requirements, can't properly reward people to play a game without.

Had a brainstorm.  Let me introduce a couple more ideas that could potentially sway this:

1. The treadmill holds less meaning if persistance becomes a neccessary requirement for any kind of advancement as opposed to persistance resulting in improvement on behalf of the player who is then rewarded.

i.e. Would you rather know that you've become a Black Belt at Karate because you're actually that good, or would you rather know that you've become a Black Belt in Karate simply because you've spent a required 2000 hours in the gym?    

The former causes the Black Belt to be a mark of personal achievement on your part.   The later causes the Black Belt to be a mark of time investment on your part.   In the later example, there's far less sense of achievement and even less reason to stick around and try to achieve it in the first place.

So what I'm basically saying here is that people would whine less about your treadmill if they felt it was worthwhile, and player skill requirements are one way in which it could be made so.

2. If the activity is adequettely fun, most people would do it regardless of if they are good at it or not.

This is a no brainer, right?   There's lots of folks who like to dance, play instruments, write fiction, and even play games (electronic or otherwise) without expectation that they'll ever make a major career out of it.  

In a game implemention, I again point mostly on the conceptual GUI interaction layer of things.     The outer design is important, and will fish in the intellectuals, but isn't capable of bringing the same kinds of hands on fun to a player who doesn't know what they're getting themselves into.

To put it another way, in order for this to work, the fun needs to be within the act itself, not it's consiquences.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 13, 2004, 06:42:44 PM
Quote from: CmdrSlack
(ways to kill CoH)

Personally, while grafting an Eve/SWG like economy on CoH may be fun to contemplate, I can think of no better way to completely gut what the game is really supposed to be. Fun, frenetic, heroic.

I would rather CoH took a look at power customizations on simply a personal level. Quest/achievement based ways to personalize how your powers work versus how other's work. Sort of an Enhancements system on steroids, one where how your power actually WORKS can change, what it LOOKS like can change, what it's EFFECTIVE against can change.

Conversely, I'd like to see SWG's combat mechanic replaced with CoH's. Average the HAM bars between health and mana, and average the statistical outputs from all variables in weapon and armors down to the second decimal place so that the stats junkies can still get their 0.01% improvement for the night.


Title: False Economies
Post by: daveNYC on July 13, 2004, 08:43:07 PM
Quote from: Darniaq
Quote from: CmdrSlack
(ways to kill CoH)

Personally, while grafting an Eve/SWG like economy on CoH may be fun to contemplate, I can think of no better way to completely gut what the game is really supposed to be. Fun, frenetic, heroic.

Comic books don't have economies, except as plot devices (Peter Parker needs rent money).

Figure out what your core gameplay is going to be, if you need an economy for that gameplay to happen than include one.  If you don't, don't.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HRose on July 13, 2004, 09:31:21 PM
Quote from: Raph
So, Darniaq, the question will become what happens when you add more skill into the mix, and people find that they cannot cut it. I think MMOs look very different when the average player cannot level past the midpoint of the advancement ladder, for example.

Is that the right way to go? I don't know. I appreciate the value of having greater skill, and certainly we've educated the current MMOG audience to the point where greater skill levels need to be demanded by the game systems.

At the same time, I no longer play RTSes because they're just too complicated for me. The minimum skill level has gone up.

This is a strict gameplay discussion and I think very near to the insanely long thread over at Corp where we discussed the "fun" in games from a theoretical point of view. In another thread over at Q23 we discussed about combat simulators like Falcon and the question was if it's better the absolutely complex and realistic simulator with 500+ pages manual or one tweaked to have just what's is required to give an impression of realism, wiping every possible system that isn't directly involved in a fun gameplay.

Aside the design choice I think we agreed that the way to go was not about dumbing down the game to make it more accessible to who isn't an hardcore fanboy. The way to go depends on the newbie experience. You need to build the game so that it will lead you by hand, slowly, through a long learning process that MUST be accessible to everyone but where, at the end, you are able to *reach* the competence of every else hardcore fan. That's the point. If you achieve that you'll be able to offer a very deep game but where the accesibility isn't a PROBLEM, but it is a STRENGTH. Because during the "tutorial" not only you'll offer to everyone the tools to enjoy the game but you'll also offer already the fun. Because half the fun is exactly about *learning*.

My simple rules about the "fun" in games are:
+ We have fun when we are able to learn.
+ We are frustrated when the learning process is hard or forbidden.
+ We are bored when the learning process is missing.

I think all the gameplay in a game must consider those rules. The problem of a game too simple is that it doesn't offer anything to learn. The problem of a game too hard is that it produces frustration because the learning process is hindered. Too hard.

The key isn't about making easy and bland games, but to study them so that they offer you the tools to improve without hitting a wall.

In a FPS both the hardware and the reflex/coordination *are* walls. Those games are more compelling when it comes to have quick fun but an RPG can exploit different elements as a strength. The game could be more relaxed so that it achieves more strategical depth and also relying less on the hardware (in RPGs lag and framerates are less a factor).

When it comes to an economy the reasoning doesn't change. Building the game so that only a limited few will learn how to "exploit" the system to be successful is depreciable in my opinion. I always hate when a game is built so that some will succeed when all the others not only will but *must* suck. The system is good when everyone not only has the tools to go up, but you need also to teach how to improve. To drive the players throughout the system.

Someone falling behind is a warning, you have to go back and see why it happened and adjust things to fix the problem. Without dumbing down the game nor its ambition.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Margalis on July 13, 2004, 11:42:53 PM
I missed out of the first parts of this thread, so it's time for me to disagree with a variety of positions.

Quote from: Raph

Dude, niche? Across all games as a whole, it's probably more popular than all the forms of combat combined.
....
That playstyle is also the playstyle of games from The Sims to the Tycoon games to Civ. It's spreadsheets-as-gaming, as opposed to action gaming. It's not a small portion of the market, not by a long shot, and it tends to be a more female and mainstream audience.


This is a terrible, terrible analogy. This is akin to saying that all MMORPGs really need jumping, because jumping is a huge part of gaming. You can't take a really vague statement like "jumping is popular" and then say "so our game *needs* jumping." Similarly, you can't say "spreadsheet gaming is popular, therefore we need spreadsheets."

If you narrow down even slightly, to say, multiplayer games, suddenly spreadsheet games get a lot less popular. Quick, name a primarily multiplayer spreadsheet game...I can't name ONE. Making the Sims itself online didn't even work!

Does your puzzle game or RPG need jumping? Does your card game need jumping? Probably not.

If you examine spreadsheet games further (as in, for more than say 10 seconds), you might notice some characteristics about them or the people who play them. You can play them at your own pace. By yourself. You have great control over the situations. You are GOD. There is a very large space of possible "solutions."

Compare that to an MMORPG. You can't play them at your own pace or by yourself. You have little control over anything. You are the opposite of God. There is usually a very small space of immediately obvious optimal solutions.

IMO, a lot of what people look for in single-player "spreadsheet games" is exactly the opposite of what MMORPGs provide. A lot of spreadsheet games are called "God games." How does that mesh with a MMORPG? It doesn't.

It's fine and dandy to say spreadsheet games are popular. The next step is examining why, not just then concluding "and so...we need spreadsheets!"

----

About adding skill to the mix: MMORPGs take basically zero skill. It's funny that people would fret over it. GTA takes more skill. Super Mario 3 takes more skill. Pac-Man takes more skill. Street Fighter takes more skill. Yes, if you require very high amounts of skill, you may lose people. But if ANY genre has the most room for error there it HAS to be MMORPGs. On a scale of 1 to 10, the average MMORPG takes 1 skill. Moving it up to 2 or 3 isn't the end of the world.

What happens if players don't have the skill to make it to the top? Well, what happens if they don't have the TIME? This is the old "50% of people are below average readers." MOST people CAN'T make it to the top, by definition. (Unless your "top" is very generous) You would just be replacing one limiting factor with another. Personally, I would rather suck at a game because I'm an idiot or uncoordinated, rather than because I didn't have the time to kill 5000 rats.

Why is anyone even talking about this? Adding more skill to MMORPGs could only be a good thing at this point, because they are at the very extremes of no skill territory. Can anyone name another genre that takes less overall skill? (Other than the "Kriss Kross make your own music video" genre)

"I appreciate the value of having greater skill..." Was this supposed to say "any" skill? Seriously.

Super Mario 3 is 100x harder than a MMORPG. That didn't stop it.

Can anyone here name any MMORPG that was too hard, skill-wise? It seems that other people agree. How is this a concern at all?

"So, Darniaq, the question will become what happens when you add more skill into the mix, and people find that they cannot cut it."

If you add SOME more skill to the mix, maybe *5* people on earth won't be able to cut it. If you add a LOT of skill to the mix, you lose some people, and replace them with people who prefer challenge to obstacles. Difficulty is a challenge; time is an obstacle. The people you lose go watch TV...
----

Back to my original point...although combat in MMORPGs could use more skill, crafting is REALLY where that need stands out. I would imagine crafting appeals to people who are thoughtful, introspective, creative, open to experimentation, etc. They would want a large solution space that they could navigate with creativity and brainpower.

At least in that I think SWG had the right idea, but even so I haven't run across any crafting systems that don't reduce to a highly stratified tiering of recipes VERY quickly. The gun you make is EXACTLY the same as the gun 10000x other people can make.

AC tried to do their spell creation stuff to address this a bit. It didn't work very well, because they ignored a fundamental tenet of game design: once one person knows something, everyone knows something. (Welcome to the internet) But they had the right idea. What if to craft stuff you had to, you know, DO something, and maybe even figure something out?


Title: False Economies
Post by: CmdrSlack on July 14, 2004, 12:48:53 AM
Quote from: Darniaq
Quote from: CmdrSlack
(ways to kill CoH)

Personally, while grafting an Eve/SWG like economy on CoH may be fun to contemplate, I can think of no better way to completely gut what the game is really supposed to be. Fun, frenetic, heroic.

I would rather CoH took a look at power customizations on simply a personal level. Quest/achievement based ways to personalize how your powers work versus how other's work. Sort of an Enhancements system on steroids, one where how your power actually WORKS can change, what it LOOKS like can change, what it's EFFECTIVE against can change.

Conversely, I'd like to see SWG's combat mechanic replaced with CoH's. Average the HAM bars between health and mana, and average the statistical outputs from all variables in weapon and armors down to the second decimal place so that the stats junkies can still get their 0.01% improvement for the night.


Oh, I don't want to see crafting in CoH, I was just saying I guess it COULD be possible.  I like it the simple way it is.  Casually buying enhancements from other players is enough, thanks.  

Glad that you also think it would make the game hugely suck.  No need to craft, that's all in the enhancements anyway.  All of the "things you could craft" were basically the same idea as the current enhancement system.  Cept you can't craft them.  And that's good.  

I'd much rather see someone make this ultra-immersive, hard as hell to make economy where a steampunk game could have the labor disputes and class stratification and whatnot.  If EQ necros could gather up enough people to do a "sit in" more than once, players can gather up enough people to create the equivalent of a general strike.  Sure, it won't be fun for anyone, but it'd be nifty.  You could add some boobs.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 14, 2004, 05:20:34 AM
Quote from: CmdrSlack
I'd much rather see someone make this ultra-immersive, hard as hell to make economy where a steampunk game could have the labor disputes and class stratification and whatnot. If EQ necros could gather up enough people...


Hehe. SWG, UO, Eve and ATITD are all systems in which general strikes, riots, proletariat and all of that stuff could happen. As with all of history though, you need a leader, and that leader must be believable and loud enough to gather and keep the masses together.

People are fickle. We've all had turns at trying to lead, and the biggest problems are focus and complacency. Since these games ultimately don't matter for anyone who doesn't want them to matter, players are free to simply walk away, or log on to another server, to wait until the dust settles.

Quote from: Margalis
Can anyone name another genre that takes less overall skill?

I think you're over-condemning MMORPGs. Yes, time is more rewarded than skill, but every single game has areas that do require player skill. Players need to make actual decisions during combat in a quick amount of time. As much as I like to rail on RPG PvP outside of SB, most PvP does require player skill. Combatants are not both hitting auto-attack and watching. They're making real-time decisions on top of the number swapping.

RPG PvP is more abstract, yes, because what you bring to the fight is at least as important as the decisions you make during it. In turn, that abstractness rewards time more than skill because most RPG PvP is the end result of a great deal of build up (levels, equipment, farming resources, etc).

The best example I can think of is City of Villains. I have no idea what we'll be playing when it launches, but at E3 that was near-FPS in skill requirements. SB comes very close to that as well. I imagine DAoC does too, but even my addicted bro-in-law spends 90% of his time prepping for battle rather than fighting in one.


Title: False Economies
Post by: CmdrSlack on July 14, 2004, 08:41:27 AM
[quote="Darniaq]Hehe. SWG, UO, Eve and ATITD are all systems in which general strikes, riots, proletariat and all of that stuff could happen. As with all of history though, you need a leader, and that leader must be believable and loud enough to gather and keep the masses together.
[/quote]

Very true.  I guess what I'm looking for is the ability to actually destroy the industrial centers, etc.  I mean if you're gonna go beyond a feudal economy, let's have some class war just for fun.


Title: Socialism vs. Power
Post by: Mordechai on July 14, 2004, 09:56:49 AM
Quote
I look at MMOG's lately as the kind of ill-fated socialistic (yes, Marxist) attempts at world creation. Everyone starts equal, with no personal ownership involved. No man is greater than any other man (or woman).

That comes down to the fact that no player's money is greater than any other player's money. The game designers, whose point of view is strongly affected by their need to buy groceries, want to make sure that all of the players hand over their money on a regular basis. The first step in doing this is to provide the same set of starting conditions for each player. The outcome might look like an experiment in socialism, but the reasons for it are solidly capitalistic.

Would you buy a single-player console game if you knew that for your $49.95 the box would randomly contain either a game with 10 options and 200 levels, or a game with 2 options and 15 levels? Would anyone? Players want the difference in advancement in the game to be due to their own input, whether that be skill, time, or whatever the game demands, not a random set of starting conditions that gives their opponents an advantage over them.
Quote
Ain't it funny how the first things most players strive for in MMOG's is some measure of power or prestige to place him above his fellow man?

It's a game. That's how we keep score. But we want -- we demand -- to know that everyone is starting with a score of 0, rather than some people starting at 0, other people staring at 500, and some other people getting twice the points for the same action as we do.

Excessive realism in games is a bad idea.

Take the pseudo-medieval background of the "classic" RPG, whether paper or computer. In the real world, 99% of us would be peasants or serfs, enduring a life that features hard work, short rations, and disease. Of course, nobody wants to play a starving peasant, so that part of "realism" gets thrown out the door. Instead, we all take on the roles of essentially modern people dropped into a medieval society, without any of the constraints which confined even members of the upper class. The "realism" is just scenery. Realism there would make for a not-fun game.

The same is true, by necessity, of any element of gameplay which leads to a minority of the players having most of the fun while the rest of them endure something which is frustrating or tedious, especially if it is visibly to the benefit of that minority. In real life, you're stuck with the starting parameters you were born with. But you can always just quit playing a game that's not fun and either play a competing game or go watch TV.

While a wealthy clique in control of the game's resources, politics, etc., is the natural development of society, it's also poison to the profitability of the game. Most people are lazy, and in particular they don't want to work in their leisure time. Players who aren't members of the dominating clique will look at the amount of effort needed to join or compete with them, a position which seems to be required in order to have the maximum fun, compare it to going to play EQ instead, and take the path of least resistance: out the door.

Permadeath is an example of why realism can be bad. *watches opened can of worms erupt in a squirming mass* People say "well, players can accept the idea of losing a game" -- but that's not what permadeath is, in conceptual terms. In the context of a MMOG, the "game" is a single incident: a raid, a keep take, a crafting session, whatever. The individual character equates more to a player's long-term record. Imagine an online RTS game where, if you ever lose a game, your name gets completely wiped from the ladder. You don't have a win/loss record, you don't even have a high score record of 11 wins before the final loss, it's like you never played at all. Permadeath removes the rewards for competing because the eventual loss of a single game that erases your whole record is inevitable.

We can talk all we like about MMOGs as grand social experiments, but the bottom line is that they're a way of inducing us to transfer money from our pockets to the owners' pockets. How successful a game is at that, and only at that, makes all the difference in whether poor abused Raph heads for the steak cooler or the mac & cheese shelf when he walks into the grocery store. Even the free MUDs are driven by a form of market conditions, because their users are still budgeting a limited commodity: time. If they're not having fun, they'll go somewhere that they are.

This stuff isn't reality. It isn't a simulation of reality. It's a game where some of the fun comes from mimicing certain aspects of reality. That makes all the difference in the world.


Title: Re: Socialism vs. Power
Post by: Dark Vengeance on July 14, 2004, 10:31:30 AM
Quote from: Mordechai
In real life, you're stuck with the starting parameters you were born with. But you can always just quit playing a game that's not fun and either play a competing game or go watch TV.


Not to mention that IRL, there is a bit of fear and moral objection to simply "quitting to go do something else". Basically you boil down to the "opt out" defense.....but this is always a risk.

What's the alternative? Make a game that is fun for everyone at all times.

Now why didn't we think of that before?

Bring the noise.
Cheers............


Title: False Economies
Post by: Mordechai on July 14, 2004, 01:40:40 PM
Quote
What's the alternative? Make a game that is fun for everyone at all times.

Obviously that's not possible, which I presume is your point.

However, what can be done is twofold:

First, identify the target market for the game and what they find fun. If you're building a game to appeal to PvPers, you will want to include a wide variety of combat options, areas to attack and defend, etc. If you're building it for social/political gamers, you want to have a flexible guild structure, a player government, and maybe even a working economy. If you're going for the PvE players, they will want interesting mobs, unique items, etc. More important is not requiring things that your identified target group hates. Getting that wrong would lead to something like putting a complicated crafting system into a PvP game and requiring players to spend endless hours making their own weapons and armor: most crafters would hate it because they wouldn't be able to sell stuff, and most PvPers would hate it because they don't like crafting. So you'd lose both markets. This tends to come about when the designer has an ironclad idea of how he thinks the players should play, and when he finds out that the people he expected to be forming armies are having tea parties instead, he ignores the fact that they're paying just as much per month to have their tea parties and tries to force them to fight no matter what, because that's what his vision of the game is all about.

The other major aspect of this is to accept that every game isn't going to be fun for everyone all the time, so therefore you have to be careful to make sure that the positive payoff is worth the negatives. Not-fun things should be minimized as much as possible. Remember, people are paying for fun; that's your product, not pixels or documentation or ones and zeroes. If a game isn't fun for most players most of the time, it's broken. No matter how perfect a simulation of something it is, it's broken. With that in mind, intentionally tedious elements and deliberate time sinks should be minimized. Requiring someone to wait a certain length of time to gain an advanced rank is no more arbitrary than requiring them, as in one game I once played, to say "wood" literally tens of thousands of times, and it's much less boring. They aren't paying by the minute; toss out conventions that date back to the time when they were. Fun stuff should occur frequently, in small doses if necessary, without long, tedious waits for more of it. Rewards should be in clear view (not necessarily the nature of the reward, but the fact that there is one out there) and progress should be in some way visible. This stuff all sounds obvious, but there are a hell of a lot of designers who don't do it, and instead focus on "realism" to the detriment of having some fun.

Look at gambling. That's a fundamentally un-fun activity: giving your wealth away, because the odds always favor the house. Yet the casinos make it so appealing that people line up for the privilege of throwing money away. Bottle that and you've got it made.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 14, 2004, 07:16:06 PM
While it's good points there, it's not saying anything the devs don't already know: demographics and expectations.

We're not really arguing intent as much as we're debating process and the results from them. Details man, details! :)


Title: False Economies
Post by: HRose on July 15, 2004, 02:42:30 PM
I so do not agree. It's the public that should chase your game because it opens new perspectives and not the game that should chase an already established public.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Venkman on July 15, 2004, 04:03:16 PM
Business is both causal and reactive. Demographics work. Billions of dollars proves it. It's not the only option, but it's the one many like because it's less risky than taking real chances.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Sky on July 16, 2004, 07:05:28 AM
That's why we are getting Boy Bands and not Beethoven.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Roac on July 16, 2004, 07:43:29 AM
Quote
Look at gambling. That's a fundamentally un-fun activity: giving your wealth away, because the odds always favor the house. Yet the casinos make it so appealing that people line up for the privilege of throwing money away. Bottle that and you've got it made.


Everquest did, and that's why it's loved so dearly.  One of the primary motivating factors of gambling is the concept of small, random payouts; studies show that people are far more disposed to receiving that sort of payout instead of a single large payout that occurs less often, or steady payouts.  It's the uncertainty that drives us, because the Human brain is highly geared toward pattern matching.  If the series is too infrequent, then we do not notice enough change in the output to make a pattern (aside from "you lose"), and no payouts to create a positive experience.  If the series is too frequent, then the series is too simple and too obvious; every dollar we spend nets 95c in return, without much fail (or whatever the return is set to).  Achieving that middle road creates the randomness that entices us to try and solve the pattern (which leads to things such as the Gambler's Fallacy, belief in Lady Luck, etc), and generates enough positive payouts to keep us hooked.

Everquest did that with the "Ding".  That's the cheese, and although the xp per mob isn't much of a pattern, the combat itself is.  You have to do what you can to control the uncertain nature of combat in order to try and regulate the xp flow much as you can, in order to get your prize.  UO did something similar with their skill gains - people playing for hours past when they intended, hoping that they'll get just one more .1 gain.  You had people hooked on something as pointless as fishing primarilly because of that randomness.  You also had people comming up with all sorts of whacked ideas on how to improve skill gain, although devs said repeatedly that most of them didn't work - and obviously wouldn't even after mechanics were disclosed.  It's a MMOG version of the Gambler's Fallacy, where we try to see a pattern that does not exist.


Title: False Economies
Post by: nesta on July 16, 2004, 07:24:29 PM
Quote from: Roac
Quote
Look at gambling. That's a fundamentally un-fun activity: giving your wealth away, because the odds always favor the house. Yet the casinos make it so appealing that people line up for the privilege of throwing money away. Bottle that and you've got it made.


Everquest did, and that's why it's loved so dearly.


WoW will be a perfect experiment to see if the gambling analogy and the small infrequent payouts hypothesis are correctly attributable to the success of EQ. For something to be a gamble there has to be a chance of loss - in EQ it was experience points. But in WoW there is no concomitant loss except the minor time and inconvenience of a safe and speedy corpse run - yet the game is still extremely fun and addicting.


Quote
Everquest did that with the "Ding".  That's the cheese, and although the xp per mob isn't much of a pattern, the combat itself is.  You have to do what you can to control the uncertain nature of combat in order to try and regulate the xp flow much as you can, in order to get your prize.  


Your example here isn't gambling, it's something more akin to collecting something, beanie babies perhaps. This is really my point: people aren't drawn to gambling and MMOGs for the same set of reasons. Getting addicted to the cheese isn't quite the same as being addicted to the thrill of gambling. This is an important distinction if you are trying to design a game for the masses to get addicted to.

Also, as an aside, not all gambling is inherently "un-fun" for the reasons described above. Poker is a game that can be beat since you're not playing the house, but other people. Video poker with a progressive jackpot can be profitable if played perfectly (not hard, they even let you use a book as a guide if you want) as well as sports betting, which can produce long term winners if they have sufficient talent as handicappers.

Nesta


Title: False Economies
Post by: Margalis on July 17, 2004, 01:13:39 PM
XP in MMORPGs is very predictable. If we are going to talk about random payouts, item drops would be the first place to look.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Train Wreck on August 27, 2004, 02:46:05 PM
Regarding gambling in RPGs, the Dragon Warrior series got it down pat.  I used to spend all day long in their virtual casinos (anybody remember Endor?)  It had slot machines, poker, and even let you bet on monster battles.  Credits could be spent on equipment that was available nowhere else, such as the Metal Babble Armor and Shield of Strength.

Using hazardous dungeon raids as analogies to gambling for luxuries is well and good, but why not make use of some real gambling?  Most people would love to gamble more irl, but usually put limits on themselves because of real-world considerations.  In a MMORPG -- where the name of the game is fun and entertainment -- such limitations are not necessary.

I believe pulling off a lavish "strip of Las Vegas" casino haven in a MMORPG can be met with great success.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HaemishM on August 30, 2004, 09:53:35 AM
NECRO POSTER!

Actually, I was always saddened by the casino games in Everquest. If you ever go into one or two of the bars in Highhold Pass, it's very obvious that they meant to put some serious gambling mini games with their own interfaces into the taverns in EQ. The NPC's are still there, they even talk about their games, I think, but the games were never implemented for two reasons: 1) They thought gambling would piss off the parents/lawyers/congressmen/lawyers or some such, 2) They didn't have time to implement them before release anyway.

Virtual casinos or at least bettable mini-games in fantasy taverns and sci-fi bars would be incredibly immersive and probably quite popular.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Train Wreck on August 31, 2004, 01:26:04 PM
Quote from: HaemishM
NECRO POSTER!


When I saw a large thread about economics, I dived right in, not noticing that it died well over a month ago.  Dammit!!

I wanted to respond to points made by several different people, but it looks like I arrived to this party a bit late.


Title: False Economies
Post by: HaemishM on August 31, 2004, 02:50:44 PM
Hey, don't let the stale corpse stop you. :) If you can re-stimulate discussion, kick the bitch into gear.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Train Wreck on September 01, 2004, 11:46:58 AM
Quote from: HaemishM
Hey, don't let the stale corpse stop you. :) If you can re-stimulate discussion, kick the bitch into gear.


Ok, I'm known more as a thread-killer than a resurrector, but I'll give it a shot. :)  My first response is to Destro, who had a lot of interesting things to say (as did many others).

Quote
destro: ... players will prefer the banknotes to hides precisely because they're not easy to gather. However, if the economy is not working properly newbies may find themselves excluded and unable to make money from the other players.  In this case they will revert to a barter system simply because they don't have the option of using the more valuable and versatile currency.


Do you have any specific examples of newbies getting excluded from an economy, and/or not being able to make money off of other players?  The phrase “not working properly” seems to suggest that it was an artificial implementation.

If a tailor finds himself unable to harvest enough resources on his own, he would have no reason not to buy hides off of other players.  Whether a player can benefit by being a contracted hides gatherer is dependent upon on how much money they can expect to make in their normal activity during a certain time frame.

This is known in economics as “Opportunity Cost”, defined as “the sacrificed alternative.”  To use an example in the real world, imagine somebody that owns their own business (I’ll call him Fred).  The more time he devotes to it, the more money he makes in a day (as opposed to a wage-earner that works a set time for a set pay).  To keep it simple, let’s say that he makes about $100 per hour.  One day the business owner notices that his yard is starting to look neglected.  He is perfectly capable of mowing the lawn, trimming bushes, and whatnot, but that would cause him to lose $100 of missed opportunity each hour that he spends doing it.  The obvious solution: hire the neighbor’s kid at $5 an hour to do it for him.

To get a better perspective, compare this to somebody that is off on Saturdays (I’ll call him Bob) and couldn’t work for an income on that day even if he wanted to.  If Bob decides to hire the kid to do it, he will be out $5.  Fred, on the other hand, would be out $95.

This is the method to be used in MMORPGs to determine if you should gather your own resources, or if you are better off hiring somebody else to do it for you.  Many people do this intuitively, and they can even bust out the spreadsheets to really be a tycoon if they wanted to.  But as obvious as it may seem, I know lots of people in MMORPGs that failed to grasp the concept.

“Why should I pay you 10000 gold to spend an hour mining when I can do it myself???  I would only make 15000 after selling the finished goods!  I don't mind crafting when I can make 15k, but for 5k it just isn't worth it.”

Is that really so?  What if you could make 20k per hour from a dungeon raid?  In such a case, mining yourself would cause you to LOSE 5,000gp.  (Lost 20k by giving up a dungeon hunt, but made 15k from the finished goods.)  However, hiring somebody would result in netting 25k (20k from the hunt, -10k for wages, +15k for sold goods.)

This was very prevalent in EQ before common magic regs such as batwings and bonechips were stocked by NPC merchants.  Players would often pay newbies 5 plat for a stack of 20.  Why pay so much for something they could so easily harvest themselves?  If it takes them half an hour to harvest the resources, and they loot an average of 100p per hour during a normal hunt, why the hell should they harvest it themselves?  

Not only does this example taken straight out of MMORPG history show that it is beneficial for high level players to hire newbies, it also destroys the notion that players on the bottom rungs of the economy are doomed to exploitation.

Like Raph pointed out, not being at the very top doesn’t mean that participating in the economy will automatically not be fun.  In this case, even for a total newbie, participating in the very bottom of the economy is -- in every way, shape, and form --  immensely more fun than avoiding it.  Having 5 plat to spend, rather than 2 gp that an NPC would have paid them, means they will have new spells and equipment that much faster.


Quote
I’d like to see still more layers, large-scale management and trade routes. Also, some way to incorporate the activity of other players still in the lower layers into your business empire. For example, setting up large, expensive workshops which newbies could use to craft items, saving them from having to spend time obtaining certain tools and giving the elder player a cut of whatever they sell their products for.


Many of these things already exist in MMORPGS, having evolved in the community on their own.  In the first month of EQ’s existence, way back when patchwork armor was in high demand because 90% of the population were newbies, I used to hunt bear cubs in Halas to easily obtain large pelts, then carry the finished products to the ogre city.  Since large hides in that region were on full-grown bears, there was a pw shortage there.  The first trip was so lucrative (compared to what I was used to) that I got some friends to carry goods on the next trip.  It was a trade rout in every sense.  Of course it didn’t remain profitable for long, but such things are certainly possible and can be incorporated into game design.

Incorporating newbies into your business empire -- SWG players do that every day by buying resources off the bazaar.  They did the same thing in UO by buying ingots and wood.  If you mean hiring them as contractors, UO was onto something when they finally added work contracts that were randomly given to players when they sold crafted items to NPC merchants -- simply make the orders so large that they will be better off buying the items off of lesser skilled craftsmen (who usually have trouble selling non-commodities to other players) than creating the goods themselves.

The UO contract idea can even be used to facilitate trade routs.  Require goods to be crafted in one area (perhaps by requiring a specific regional resource) and sold in another.

I'll post more later, particularly about gambling and player innovation.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Dark Vengeance on September 01, 2004, 12:06:25 PM
Quote from: Train Wreck
To get a better perspective, compare this to somebody that is off on Saturdays (I’ll call him Bob) and couldn’t work for an income on that day even if he wanted to.  If Bob decides to hire the kid to do it, he will be out $5.  Fred, on the other hand, would be out $95.


Just to nitpick...if Bob hires the kid, he is out $5, but he can do it himself basically for free. If Fred hires the kid, he is out $5...but if he does it himself he is out $100. This basically means Fred has a $95 incentive to pay the kid.

Your comments on opportunity cost, and how it pertains to the way many powergamers typically play are correct. Basically, it's an effort to min/max on time/profit. But, playing in the most efficient way doesn't mean you'll have fun....if anything, quite possibly the opposite.

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............


Title: False Economies
Post by: Train Wreck on September 01, 2004, 01:53:40 PM
Quote from: Dark Vengeance

Just to nitpick...if Bob hires the kid, he is out $5, but he can do it himself basically for free. If Fred hires the kid, he is out $5...but if he does it himself he is out $100. This basically means Fred has a $95 incentive to pay the kid.


What you call the "incentive" is a synonym for O.C.  It's a tangible numerical value that you can compare to see which is better, at least when measuring money.


Quote
Your comments on opportunity cost, and how it pertains to the way many powergamers typically play are correct. Basically, it's an effort to min/max on time/profit. But, playing in the most efficient way doesn't mean you'll have fun....if anything, quite possibly the opposite.


It's crafter's version of the powergamer when taken to extremes, but I mostly use it as a means of weighing options and making virtual business decisions.  It's also a good argument to use against players that believe they are getting hosed or exploited when they really aren't.  

And I agree 100% that anybody whose goal is to maximum their income all the time will probably get bored/burned out quickly.  That's why I purposely used an example in which the "best" option was also probably the most enjoyable option: hunting in a dungeon instead of gathering resources.


Title: False Economies
Post by: Train Wreck on September 01, 2004, 03:30:52 PM
Quote
HRose: This is the whole point. Economies are unnecessary if the game itself doesn't offer a very strict specialization in the possible activities.


Economies will intrinsically exist wherever items are traded between players.  It’s as natural as a law of nature.  Even Diablo II has an economy, and I doubt Blizzard spent any amount of time deciding how it would function.


Quote
In a game like WoW, DAoC or EQ the economy is simply a burden and every attempt at adjusting it will destroy a bit more the fun in the game.


It’s been my observation in the few MMORPGs I played that a badly planned economy was a bigger burden than one that sought to be realistic.  Perhaps the devs’ interventions to try to fix the flawed system were even worse than the original problems, but that does nothing to prove that realistic economies are burdens to the players; it proves that planning an economy poorly and trying to fix it later is the biggest burden.


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The more the economy works the more the game will bleed. In other games (like Eve), the economy simply works because you have 80% of the game painfully boring. So that trading acquires a meaning. And this demonstrate how much a real economy defines an horrible game with faked depth.


It sounds like you’re saying that the more realistic an economy is, the more boring the game will be.  Just because this is true in Eve (which I’ve never played), doesn’t make it true for everything.

Complaints about SWG -- such as having to wait around for entertainers and doctors in between hunts -- are valid.  But I believe they are the result of forcing player interaction in various relationships that are not really related to the economy.


Title: Economy? BAH
Post by: chinslim on September 28, 2004, 06:08:43 PM
There's no such thing as a broken MMO economy - only a dead video game.  As long as there's a flow of "goods" and "services" of some definable value, no matter how twisted it may get, the game's economy is working.  The only thing broken is the modeling of the real world.

We don't expect combat to model the real world(i.e. permadeath), so why should the economy?  

The economy(and the game) stops when that flow of goods and services stop.  Let the game developers encourage free market capitalism or moderate the economy programmatically(npc's that buy and sell loot), all that matters is stuff moves to allow people to play.


Title: False Economies
Post by: personman on September 29, 2004, 09:37:35 AM
Agreed.  UO has to be the poster child for why "open-ended" (I'm trying to be nice!) economies have no real effect on the fun factor.