My mind was open, once. Right about the same time they gave me my frontal lobotomy .

Ps: You can''t avoid "macroing" any kind of game that has a user interface, because you can always simulate a user. It''s a simple truth, even if you have to make your program generate keystrokes.


Give me one more medicated peaceful moment..
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important social functions will be disabled from now on.

I know I will probably get flamed for this, but I have a solution for scripting/macro-ing. Personally I don't think there is anything wrong with this, especially in a pay-for-play game. And I liked Kylotan's idea of accepting the inevitable and embracing it by making actual game playing more productive.

But on to my solution. If you allow pk-ing, it is a lot easier to kill a scripted player than one that is being run by a real player. So, if you want to script, go ahead, but there is a risk involved (that is being killed and losing all your stuff). Simple solution

Hitman

Edited by - Hitman on June 27, 2000 12:09:47 PM

Let''s see if I can guide this thread back on course.
Economics.

If you build a game that allows players to "macro" for skills you run the risk of everyone in the game being Experts at just about anything they wish. This has the potential of an influx of "high-level" items created by these high level characters.
This brings a big questions to mind:
What affect (if any) will this have on an economy?

I would like to hear some of your ideals.






Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

Those goblins are carrying cash because if they didn''t, the game would really suck! Do you really want a "real-life" economy in your game? I think not. Think for one second:

If Everquest took place in "real-life" dark-ages Europe, for example, all 60,000 players on the servers would be digging carrots and shoveling horse crap for a living. Not hunting mobs, not completing quests, nothing! Nobody had money, nobody had an exciting or particularly nice existence, and nobody cared whether or not the shopkeeper had a sword in stock--because they couldn''t afford one anyway!

The simple fact is that "real" economy is boring and SUCKS in the context of a game.

If you want economy in a game, go click furnature in Ultima Online. If you want a fun game, give the mobs some cash.

My cents on Economy and Trade:



1. Like someone said it''s been tried over and over again. Its nearly impossible to create a perfect system. If you really are into game designing take a look at the thousands of muds out there (they are free), they contain alot of ideas go get them!



2. Trade is cool, but it will be abused, ESPECIALLY in non-static dynamic economy worlds built on suppy and demand. Its so EASY to twink. Just go to town Hurghurhgy and get some gold then go to another town and sit and wait till the prices are at the level you want etc etc.



3. Create wonderful things to take large amounts of cash OUT of the system, like: Guild Halls, Boats, Houses, things that cost ALOT of money. Don''t use items that degenerate and need repair it''s boring imho, altho i see why some games use it.



4. Someone talked about trade skills being dull. Use Charisma and Races, and as some dude said diffrent currency in diffrent towns. A dwarf would sell something for a better price to a kindred and quite high to a human, a gnome fairly since they are a related race etc. A character with good charisma stat should be able to flatter himself a better price.



Thx for your time.

Humm.. ok now.. this has gone far enough

Dak.. i think building a certain level of macros into the game is nessicary, but if you give people no reason to macro, then they won''t. A game that supports macros or repetative tasks is inherant to failing to meet a no-macro decree So therefore, give people macros lest you not have use for them otherwise someone else will make them.. and you''ll feel bad.
I think it impacts the economy in games like UO where you could potentially hit and get a ton of ore or whatever. It doesn''t effect a game like EQ much, since it''s got no economy anyways

I think that macros are purely for powermaxing, and offer no economic benefits in the long run. They actually just accelerate the rate at which the money floods the system, and puts macro''d players at the top of the food chain. Again.. if you take out the food chain, no need to macro.

Buster, Spoken like a true powermaxer! I hate to think you are one of these. Monsters carry cash because the game would suck otherwise. That''s too intelligent for me to even attempt a response to. Try reading everything else that''s been going on before commenting, please.

Spyder, Perfection is impossible in humans, we just want 99.99% perfect I think the major problem is that no one accounts for things like how life actually was back then. Sure, we''re making a fantasy game.. but money doesn''t grow on trees, does it? If there was no money, or infinate money.. then money is worthless and only trade goods become useful. Think about it.. if there was no money, of course money wouldn''t matter. If there was infinate money, then everyone would have it.. so it''d be worthless. It''s like using grass as money. "hey hun, i''m going to mow the lawn so i can buy that lamborghini and porsche i always wanted!" yeah, right.
So take a critical look at how important a closed-money system is. Without the feds moderating the money supply, we''d be screwed. Look at the depression of the 1930''s. What happened? People realized there wasn''t enough gold to back the dollar value, and tried to trade their money in for actual gold (which backs every known currency). When the banks couldn''t provide it, they had to shut down. This resulted in people literally LOSING all their money because it was worthless. Same thing happened after the civil war. The southern dollar became worthless and thus was worth more to burn as fuel on a fire to keep you warm. The system has to have some sort of backing to it or the currency is worthless. Why do all these games have all this coinage? In D&D it''s platinum, gold, silver, etc.. that''s been printed into coins. They''re actually made of a certain ammount of their respective materials which give them their worth. This worth is why the currency has value. However, if gold were not limited, or if it were common, it would have much less value placed to it. So you see the problem here.
if your moneitary units are made of some precious/rare metal, they''ve a reason to be valued. We create a number system for their value. A copper is worth 1, a gold worth 100 copper.. etc. Jewels and gems also have some value associated with them, although they''re harder to appraise and offer less clear-cut value, unless the gems all are the same size and shape. So you see.. an endless money supply is stupid to try and have. We merely try to keep the money supply in balance by printing enough dollars to keep up with the expanding population. I think the "perfect" goal is to keep a 1 to 1 ratio of ammount of money in the realm from when you start to any point later. if you decide each person should live comfortably on 100 gold a year, then that''s your 1:1 100 gold per person per year. so you take the number of people and multiply it all out to figure how much to start them with based on average earnings over a year, and vroom.. you''re off
it''s actually quite complex in the end. i''m too tired to explain it all now ::checks clock..:: 4:40 am here. hehe!

Spyder, trade systems must be balanced correctly. A futures market is actually something good. My girl and i are working on this for our MMORPG. You pay ahead of time to get a certain ammount of crop. In the end you get that, and you sell it somewhere. The farmer gets cash up front from you, and you hopefully make money in the end by selling for more than you bought. If there''s a draught, then the price of something goes up and you make money. If there''s a surplus, the price is driven down and you lose money. It''s all like gambling
Repairing items is a fact of life. Items break, and you buy new things. otherwise, why buy new cars? People buy GOOD cars so they last a long time (well, most people do). I mean, if you go out and look around.. you''ll find out most people buy imports over domestics. Why? gas mileage and service costs and life expectancy! plus styling but styling is a bonus. Heck, look at it like this.. i''ve got an 85 honda prelude with 283k miles on it. Original engine and transmition and no major engine work to date. The car''s actually only on it''s fourth clutch, even. Honda makes some really great cars, and a LOT of people know this, and they buy Honda simply because of reputation. Me and another guy have a high-mileage prelude competition going on. He''s got 265k currently and is trying to beat me out for the record of highest mileage prelude on hondaprelude.com he''s got stickers in his car reading "250,000 miles and still rolling, try that in a domestic!" hehe
There''s a very big reason why Hondas have a high resale value, and why Kias don''t. Quality. You buy quality or you lose out later. This is something that the game should have as a feature. If you pay for crappy stuff, then it''ll break. It was well known that spanish steel was the strongest steel in the midieval world People would spend a LOT of money trying to acquire thier weaponry and trying to master their techniques for steel working.. yet never did it right. It''s something that happens sometime and is known in economics as a competative edge in a perfect competition market, one can actually stand out over the rest and make profits because they have some sort of technological innovation or some kinda natural reason for being the best... or even a favoratism reason Why does Coke rule the southern US? they''ve been here forever and they''re kinda the "tried and true" brand around here. It''s that way with a LOT of things if you look at it. Area preferrence and such. These are all important to put into a game and should be seriously thought about, not just tossed aside like many people do.

Ok, that''s enough rant for now if you''ve managed to read this far, congrats. LOL. I had a lot to say and.. well.. even more in my head Just annoyed that people don''t take the time to think about why we have things and why other people blindly look past them. Be open-minded, please

J

What about bartering in MMORPG''s? I mean a medival economy, in fact almost every early economy was half driven by a system of barter initially. Say for instance instead of directly trading with cash between player-npc and npc-npc you could have a system of barter and trade, say like a wandering merchant form the enxt village comes over with 100 piles of leather hides that could be made into all sorts of leather goods and the local merchant has a bunch of barrels full of fermenting grapes then they would exchange their goods depending on different supply and demand! and this would also work in the time of a depression because good would still be of equal value, like a leather hide would be worth the about the same as a jug of wine. even though both individually would cost 100''s of gold coins (hyperinflation).

This system could also lend itself to credit systems especially with player characters, where they could get armour and weapons from shops as long as the ypromised to pay them back as soon as they got the money, and if they didn''t pay up then the store keeper and all the assistants would spread the word about the player and then soon after 1 bad deal the player would find it hard to buy anything on credit, and all the toehr prices would be increased for him until he made good on his deal and then eventually (a lot more slowly) the credit rating would go back to normal for that character. This would add a lot more depth to the economy rather than soley relying on hard currency and precious metals.

Also with the mining aspect of the economy i.e. gathering the raw materials, you would have a guild, plenty of guilds for every profession and a trade guild too! But the point is that there woiuld be a lot of ore and trees in the area, like years worth, but the thing is that most of the cavces with the good ore (high concentration) could be protected by violent creatures, the lords army, surrounded by lava and volcanoes?
Also the raw material could be worth next to nothing compared to a more processed material, i.e. iron ore vs iron ingots (in UO terms). And in the medival era the smelting process was very unpure and a lot of waste was produced. This would keep the economy under control for some time IMHO...

And if you wanted to test it just create a few quick programs that calculate variables, like a sample economy and leave it on a another computer for a few days etc and get the output and then you''ll see how the economy model is going. Then you could try again and you''d get different results (most definetly) if you didn''t then there''s something wrong with your application and economy

well Jsut my $0.05 (AU) + 10% GST

Dæmin
(Dominik Grabiec)
sdgrab@eisa.net.au

CyberPunk RPG
http://www.eisa.net.au/~sdgrab/index.html

quote: Original post by Niphty

Humm.. ok now.. this has gone far enough

Dak.. i think building a certain level of macros into the game is nessicary, but if you give people no reason to macro, then they won''t. A game that supports macros or repetative tasks is inherant to failing to meet a no-macro decree So therefore, give people macros lest you not have use for them otherwise someone else will make them.. and you''ll feel bad.
I think it impacts the economy in games like UO where you could potentially hit and get a ton of ore or whatever. It doesn''t effect a game like EQ much, since it''s got no economy anyways

I think that macros are purely for powermaxing, and offer no economic benefits in the long run. They actually just accelerate the rate at which the money floods the system, and puts macro''d players at the top of the food chain. Again.. if you take out the food chain, no need to macro.

(SNIP)

Sorry if you took my post out of context... I may not have explained my point in this post
I feel that the ability to macro is neccessary for the player.
I am a player too... What I meant was that if you allow a player to play while not being at the computer... actually playing the game... then that is wrong (IMHO).
So, if you have 50,000 users in game and 80% of them aren''t in the game Basically thats a load on the server(s) that shouldn''t be there.
I realize the player has paid his monthly fee and _should_ have the right to be in the game, but... is it fair?

I''m trying to be open minded about this, but... I have to be realistic

BTW, Where are you in TN?




Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

quote: Original post by Spyder

4. Someone talked about trade skills being dull. Use Charisma and Races, and as some dude said diffrent currency in diffrent towns. A dwarf would sell something for a better price to a kindred and quite high to a human, a gnome fairly since they are a related race etc. A character with good charisma stat should be able to flatter himself a better price.

It seems like you''re assuming the merchant is an NPC. What if the Merchant is just another player? The stats of your character will have no bearing whatsoever on the price he will charge you.

Hitman

quote: Original post by Dak Lozar

Sorry if you took my post out of context... I may not have explained my point in this post
I feel that the ability to macro is neccessary for the player.
I am a player too... What I meant was that if you allow a player to play while not being at the computer... actually playing the game... then that is wrong (IMHO).
So, if you have 50,000 users in game and 80% of them aren''t in the game Basically thats a load on the server(s) that shouldn''t be there.
I realize the player has paid his monthly fee and _should_ have the right to be in the game, but... is it fair?

I''m trying to be open minded about this, but... I have to be realistic

BTW, Where are you in TN?




Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

LOL.. yes, they''ve paid, but they shouldn''t be there. I think a rule stating that only players at their computer should be allowed to be logged in. If you repeat actions over and over, the server can notice a patern and kick you off humans inherantly do something different every once in a while. It will warn first, of course. That way if you ARE there, you can stop it from kicking you.
Oh, and i''m in Knoxville.. home of the great UTK.. lol!

J