In my mmorpg i'm thinking of having multiple currencies with exchange rates. Certain shops only accepting certain currencies. Eg The goblin town used gold pieces whereas the pirates the next town over only value doubloons. My idea was basically that the players would drive the exchange rates themselves throught a bank system in the game based on what currencies could buy the better gear etc. I was also thinking of maybe adding in a small tax on exchanging for balancing isues, so players can't trade their entire wealth around without some kind of negative responce (or it would defeat the entire original purpose?). I basically want to know what other people think of this idea. Is it a good idea or is it just over complicating things? Also another question, should I decide on a storyline first, then design the game to fit the story or should I design the game and then invent a story to fit the game? Would either approach work?

I find that idea from an idealistic perspective very interesting, gives the game aditional realism and gives different locations in the game and the players in those locations aditional personality. Yet from a pragmatic point of view, it's just more room for catastrophe, it's already hard enough to balance an economy, keep the duping and cheating at bay, with a single currency, adding aditional ones will potencially increase those problems.

I would avoid mkaing people loose money off a trade. People play games to have fun and get good, not to have a lot of obstacles. It sounds great, but tehre must be balance.

I disagree with the different currency idea, but I think that adding taxes to the game would give the wealthy players something to think about. The problem with different currency is that if a goblin character wants to go to the pirate town to buy a boat or something, that player will become extremely annoyed because he can't buy it until he has enough doubloons making all his gold pieces useless. This might make the player want to quit, and that is not good.

But there would be a place to exchange your goblins gold for daubloons, so it won't be that tough to buy a boat. The exchange rate would have to be balanced though. Taxes would be nice too.

I think that the system you are proposing is making things more complicated than they need to be. Sure you can have different currencies, and sure you can have exchange rates, but wouldn't it be easier if everyone had gold pieces?

I think a small transaction tax could work fine. Making players interact is always a good thing, too.

I wouldn't worry about the story-vs-design aspect -- a real MMORPG is so big that you can't possibly design it all yourself anyway. So just do what you find is fun and enjoy yourself doing it. It's good design excercise.

If the shop is located in an area where people are likely to carry different forms of currency, then it seems most likely that they would be willing to accept any currency available. Though, less scrupulous shopkeepers could try scamming people by calculating with a different exchange rate than the moneys officially go for.

So if a goblin goes into Pirateville and wants to buy 200 doubloons worth of goods and the exchange rate from gold to doubloons is 1 to 5 so the goblin should only pay 40 gold.

However, the Pirate is unscrupulous so he calculates it as 1 to 4 and says the goblin owes 50 gold.

Now, when the calculation is made, the goblin has three choices. Accept, Decline and Challange or Barter. He might accept the price either through ignorance or just that he doesn't care, or he could say "Hey that doesn't seem right!" and try to get a better deal (decline just cancels the sale).


Of course, it could work the other way where the cashier doesn't bother to look up the correct exchange rate and actually gives the player a better deal than normal. In this case challanging would make the cashier check the rate and then give the real price (which would be higher).

Challanging when the price is correct might upset the cashier or something.

Of course, if you want to avoid the hassle of that, you could just make it a point to pay in whatever currencey the store is supposed to use.

Quote: Original post by hplus0603
I think a small transaction tax could work fine. Making players interact is always a good thing, too.

I wouldn't worry about the story-vs-design aspect -- a real MMORPG is so big that you can't possibly design it all yourself anyway. So just do what you find is fun and enjoy yourself doing it. It's good design excercise.

http://www.eve-online.com
Go try it for two weeks, and you'll see that a "transaction tax", or "refining tax", merely serves to reduce the ammount of money running around in the game world, if it goes to NPCs and into a black hole. If it doesn't actually leave the game, there may be a purpose. Maybe.

Not all economies must use the gold standard, something arbitrary that people claim is value. Going back to Eve, it's been joked that the players should switch to a Tritanium standard (which is a lot like saying that gravel should be used as a currency standard)

I am working to implement a system where there is a onthly tax that is set by the leader of the faction, be it a player or an NPC that all character must pay. Would this system work? Would it just annoy people, more than have a contructive purpose to keep leaderships dynamic and political opinion important?

The point of a tax on game currencies is to avoid MUD-flation.

However, when there's a fixed exchange rate between real dollars and game currency, that obviously won't fly as far. On the other hand, that exchange rate seems to keep the MUD-flation in check, as Real Dollars have to go into the game to create currency.