False Economies

[destro]

Kill these mongbats for me, peon, I'm off to play golf.

[Raph]

SWG did attempt to model innovation and obsolescence via resource turnovers. I don't think it was entirely successful though.

[Fargull]

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?

[daveNYC]

It's tough to introduce finite resources when your business plan involves people playing for an infinite period of time.

[HaemishM]

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.

[Stormwaltz]

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.

[destro]

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.

[kaid]

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

[ajax34i]

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.

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.

[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.

[Sable Blaze]

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?

[Alkiera]

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.

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

[destro]

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.

[Soukyan]

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.

[destro]

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.

[Dundee]

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.

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.

After duping effectively destroyed the UO economy

It didn't.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

[Operator]

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

[Dundee]

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.

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.

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

Yes.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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?

[geldonyetich]

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" 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.)

[slog]

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

Wrong wrong wrong wrong.  You fail Macroeconomics 101.

[Dark Vengeance]

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................

[schild]

heh.

[geldonyetich]

I'm not sure: Did I kill the line of long reasoned posts in this thread or just mangle the corpse?

[destro]

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.

[HRose]

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?

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.

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.

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 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 I've collected Rasputin, Dundee, Lum and Chris. Anyuzer doesn't work and both F13 and Corpnews don't use feeds. Damn.

[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.

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.

[geldonyetich]

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.

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.

[HRose]

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.

[HRose]

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.

[Venture]

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:

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. :-)

[Venkman]

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 :)

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.

[Venkman]

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.

[Raph]

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.

[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.

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.

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.)

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.)"

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.