hey guys, I've been working on a MUD for a while and now have some gameplay issues to face (so don't yell at me, 'rpgs are too hard, do basic stuff') . . . I have all the basics in place, but I wanna know what you guys think I should put in for the economics . . . Most systems have places where money is created, such as monsters, and then places where money is destroyed, such as stores. However this can encourage solely hunting and not so much player interaction. Also, its unrealistic . . . I've been toying around with a real economy (set amount of currency in circulation), where an amount of money is made when a new account is created . . . but that makes the problem, what if they never sign on again? Also, what if one person hordes it all . . . To counteract the first problem, I thought that I might have each persons money be stored in a central bank, and then money is taken out from there, and could also be redistributed if the person has not been on in a while through contests, prizes, etc. Well, I'd like to know what you guys think about how I should implement finances in my game . . .

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Original post by samoz Well, I'd like to know what you guys think about how I should implement finances in my game . . .

Perhaps instead of currency, have a barter driven market? You might have a general 'value' of a item to help make people get good trades, but in general allow people to barter as they see fit. Also a general value of items will help with bartering with NPCs, as you would need a item of equal or greater value to trade. It'll definately encourage player interaction. People would have to start up slowly, skinning a few wolves or something for hides, and trading those for a damaged scimitar at a barterer, and then in turn trading that later on to another user, etc... People wouldn't be able to 'hoard' lots of items either, if you only allow a small amount of items to be stored in a bank/storeroom and limit the amount of items they can hold/equip.

i like the idea of barter system. I think i might brainstorm on it for awhile. Thanks

This is a hard problem. If you give player money at account creation ppl may just abuse it by creating multiple accounts. It's better to give the players all the newbie items that they need to start making real money ingame. These items should not be "sellable". I.e if the player can kill stuff give them a weapon, if the player can harves stuff, give them an axe,pick, etc. Never give a player money
at the account creation.. unless you have a well define economy where the start-up money dosen't matter.I.e give the player x amount of money to buy the item which he/she needs to make money.. and the player can't do much else with that amount of money.. ie the player might have to create 200 new accounts to buy the new not "newbie" item..I don't think the bank idea is so good becouse of the above statement where player create mulptiple accounts and then quit.. more money in the "loop" which makes it harder for you as a GM to control the flow of money.. i'll follow this thread becouse i find it interesting to see other folks opinion.

Actually I had the problem of an 'Economy' System for a long time in my game as well. The bartering idea is a REALLY good one, unique and all that jazz. Though some people tend to like the idea of money rather than 'I give you my item for your item'. So alas...

Here is what I came up with long ago. Though it has it's flaws it may be able to help.

You're NPCs have a limited amount of 1: money and 2: the items they sell. The potions clerk has 1,983 Red potions for sale 364 Blue and 721 Green. She also has the funds of 12,941. And the hidesman overthere has some similar stuff for his skins. When a player kills that wolf mentioned earlier they can skin it and obtain its hide. When they come into town they can sell skins to the hidesman for a price depending on how much money he has to give and how many of said skin he already has. When you sell him 3 for 50 each his total money goes down by 150 and yours goes up. He also gains 3 skins of that wolf to his shop to sell for whatever price he deems is good.

Then you can take that money and go to the potions lady to buy your red potions and so on. You can also have it set so these NPCs buy new stock every X amount of time and depending on how much they have, how much the produce line sells them for and how many of the item the NPC has they get different amounts. People can spend money themselves on increasing this production lines capability to allow for more items to be sold cheeper to the stores for you.

You can also have some governmental system set in place so whenever a person or NPC makes a sale this government takes up a tax. Then this government can also give NPC shops a certain amount of money every so often, or take money away. or even slow down and speed up the production lines.

You can even make it so if people input more mony into these lines better things can start being made for NPCs to sell.

A good idea for people to get involved is have the ability to hunt for and make almost if not every item in your game, so they can get involved with these shops and sales.

One problem that becomes apparent is that eventually there will be a mass amount of money. so make the initial settup of this economy to be running on very small funds. So it takes people time to build it up. Eventually by the time its built up you can implement minigames, tournaments, special guilds and all kinds of things to take peoples money and never give it back.

Well that was the jist of my idea, hope it helps inspire you in some way.

~Thanks, Kain

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However this can encourage solely hunting and not so much player interaction. Also, its unrealistic . . .

I'm not sure I understand that statement.

I generally find that keeping the rewards low and the prices high is the easiest way to make a game economy that is stable, albeit draconian. Its a balance issue- after a certain point of increasing the rewards, then everything simply goes to hell.

Bartering systems could go a long way though. Say a monster dropped a weapon you don't want. You could barter that item for a weapon from a store. You would probably still need to pay some money for the store item, but the reduced price would be more than if you simply sold the monster-dropped item outright.

D

As far as I can tell theres two ways of handling economy:

The first is the faucet/drain system. This is pretty much what exists in current systems, though it should be modified so that only what has left the system will re-enter (and as new players join, allow a little more to enter, that way you won't run out of money because the system didn't think X amount of players would ever exist).

The second method is to have a truely closed economy. If you only have X resources in the game, then money is a true token of value. The resources prices should then be dictated by supply and demand. Of course, items should probably somehow return to raw material form for this to work propperly, or eventually circulation may stop. Again, I'd add new raw materials as new players join.

You may be able to mix the two approaches to get interesting results.

I'm personally working on a "mostly" closed economy system for a MUD I'm developing at the moment.

Interesting reads on the topic are Mu's Unbelievably Long and Disjointed Ramblings About RPG Design (In your case this section) and Richard Bartle's book, "Designing Virtual Worlds". I believe both to be must reads if you are developing a MUD or any Online RPG-style game in general, regardless of format.

Good luck! :-)

Economy in MUDs is a wonky thing. On the one hand, everyone wants to get good money from their adventuring -- on the other hand, if everyone got what they wanted, the value of the currency would diminish noticably.

If you do create money spontaneously -- like through monsters, it is a good idea to have money also cease to exist -- like through stores.

As you said before, the challenge lies in getting people to actually drop their money into these holes. If the players have the option, they'll keep their money and implicitly, devalue it in the process --- screwing up the economy.

In order for the value of the gold coin to persist, it must leave a player's hand at a rate proportionate to the rate it enters. The player must spend his money -- preferrably into a money-abolishing place like a store or somesuch.

Some conventional and reasonable ideas are:

1) Force players to rest while their wounds heal --- paying for a room at an inn or something. That way, the overhead cost of killing monsters helps alleviate the amount of currency that gets blipped into reality without the consent of some kind of national treasury or mint.

2) Although not as popular and arguably, not as fun from a gameplay perspective, forcing the player to buy supplies: food, water, first aid supplies, and so forth.

My personal favorite idea is just to not have monsters drop money in the first place -- so killing actually costs money (in healing or whatever) but rewards in experience. That adds value to other, non-combat skills that the player may want to invest in because he actually NEEDS a craft skill of some kind to help make ends meet.

But I'm crazy that way.

As far as I know, the Bartering system is the basics of a real functionning system.

For a start, you should NOT allow money to appear out of thin air in the trouser pockets of Wolves, Rats and Spiders. For a start, those wear no trousers, and therefore have no pockets. Same thing for crafted objects.

What you SHOULD do, on the other hand, is make a bunch of different skills for harvesting goods on your deceased preys. You can skin them, you can pluck them, you can get their claws and jaws and fangs and horns and stuff, as trophies. And you can butcher them if the fancy takes you. On the other hand, if food plays a role in your system, then having the food come from the hunters gatherers, and the objects used to gather and hunt come from those who need food, the system DOES turn round.

Having such objects also BEGS for a sound crafting system. Every object in the game must come from somewhere, and it is just as well they come from other players: crafters.

But the bartering system, for the start is a must. Unless you plan to create crafters with a fixed amount of money at the start, money should NOT appaear anywhere in the game. Or maybe crafters have a possibility to Mint coins?

Weather it is Gold Coins, Wolf Pelts, Food, etc, all of these act as money, weather you barter for the items or exchange colins (and exchangeing coins is realy just bartering too).

I think a good system is a barter system, but have your merchants, keep an "eye" on what players are barting for and adjust their strategies/priceing accordingly.

To reduce the effects of Hording, you could charge a fee for holding large amouns of items in a "bank vault" and limit the amount that they can carry.

A varient of the bank vault could be that the players can buy/rent houses and they cna then store their items in there. If you limit item storage to container objects and limit the amount that can be put in a container object it also increases the costs of hording.

If the players have to pay an upkeep on the house then it forces them to keep paying (and thus a drain) to maintain their hordes. This makes Hording less viable in the long term on little used accounts and provides a way that the player's horde can be recycled.

If a house must have regular payments (and you can pay a short time in advance) then it keeps the account :live" and the player activly using their wealth (horde).

In any system where items can be gathered (skinning animals, mineing, etc) then it will act as an income source for wealth. If you don't have a matching way for those items to be removed, then you will get an accumulation of those items which will lead to unwanted effects (inflation, etc).