I am trying to think of a way to create a better economy in my online game. I'm looking to see if there are any obvious or not so obvious flaws in my ideas and to get some help filling out the blanks. So, I was thinking of no money drops from mobs(unless they are specifically stealing it from a local village or something), and only usable items being salvageable from them. Every item from a mob can be used in some way in tailoring, potions making, etc. I want to create a system where mostly EVERY item above beginner level are player created. The trading system would/could collect a small amount of tax from each trade for using the trading hall or whatever, and there would/could be other various taxes around the globe. Players can create their own jobs to help other players make money. But that's still just either moving money around players hands, or taking it away from the world. How do I add money in? But not to add so much as to flood the market and kill the economy. A few NPC created jobs sure, but those can only be done so many times. Any ideas mates?

If you limit the money entering your economy, how will players acquire more wealth as they advance their characters?

I'm not looking so much to limit the amount of money into the game. But the way its entered into the game, a more realistic way than killing the same monster over and over again which seems to have an unlimited amount of cash on it.

Plus, in my system crafters will be separated from fighters. A beginning crafter wont be able to go out and collect the materials himself as a fighter wont be able to make his weapons or armor. But they will still need to buy them somehow. How can I feasibly create a way for players to make money in this sense?

First just a minor point/suggestion - don't call a tax what sounds to me like something that should be a "fee" or "purchase price" for a service. Personally a tax implies some government thug forcibly taking a cut from a transaction between two individuals undertaking a mutually agreed upon exchange. A "trading hall" or market, if there was some overhead cost that the market owner has to pay to run it, would just be charging a service fee or something.

As for money, add in a fixed amount of a currency initially by just giving it to AI market traders to start off with (say gold and/or silver) and treat it like any other market good.

Perhaps I'm missing your point, but I don't see any special problems arising when you "add" currency unless you're planning on creating money out of thin air (with NPC jobs and such), yeah you'd have to worry about inflation in that case. Instead of having your NPCs create money from nothing, you could simulate them earning it from other NPCs (or players). This might need to be pretty sophisticated, so it depends on the level of realism and complexity you want. But for example, an NPC blacksmith may offer some kind of job which they pay you for in gold, and the gold would have had to come from sales of things the NPC had produced. (There may be times where a quest is not available because the NPC is short gold, but that's realism for you.)

But if you want to have EVERY item player created, why make an exception for currency? Don't create anything, including money, out of thin air and you won't have to worry about 'flooding the market' like most fake game economies can do.

You probably have other questions now, don't you? ;)

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Original post by CadetUmfer If you limit the money entering your economy, how will players acquire more wealth as they advance their characters?

Hmm, she doesn't need to keep adding money into the game for players to gain wealth. Money isn't wealth by itself, it's just a convenient way to conduct trade and facilitate bartering for the things you need.

You could make an argument that money has to be added into the system at some slow rate, as the amount of goods circulating in the system rises (to avoid price deflation), but even that's not a problem as long as your 'currency' can be further divided into smaller units. Of course, I'm talking about a *healthy* economy, not the type that everyone is used to, with constant inflation.

But anyway, if your goal is to attempt to 'regulate the value of money' and manipulating the supply of it--even modern day economists can't do that successfully, so doing it within an automated game is going to be difficult.

I apologize in advance if I'm thinking too much like an economist and not enough like a game designer or gamer--if I am let me know what I'm neglecting and I'll try to put my game designer cap back on for a reply.

[Edited by - Tebriel on July 6, 2009 12:01:16 AM]

Well, I see problems arising when every item has a purpose to another player so players will sell items amongst themselves instead of to NPC's, therefor, no new money entering the game. Just being recycled between players and lowering prices to items. I envision something like the great depression, no one has enough money so the prices for everything go to like a few pennies each.

And yes, I meant a trading hall there would be "fees" I supposed I used taxes in to general a term. As to, any type of fee the player has to pay to the game in some way or another. Trades between players would not cost anything.

Would an actual job work? Say for X amount of hours you spend on the game, your employer wants you to spend X hours working for them.

No problem thinking like an economist, people thought like game designers before and look where the state of economy's in games are now.

and...it's she >.> Seriously, how much more of a female name do I need to have?

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Original post by Dasha and...it's she >.> Seriously, how much more of a female name do I need to have?

OOps..will correct!

A little known fact about the Great Depression is that people "not having enough money" wasn't the cause. (I could talk about this subject in detail but I'll spare you!)

Anyway, without getting off topic, I think I understand where you're coming from but I don't think it's going to cause any kind of "game depression".

If there really wasn't enough money in circulation, we have to think about how players would react. You may have more to add but right now I can think of a few things that could happen:

1) Players identify something else to use as currency, and start trading that amongst themselves instead of the original currency. There's nothing wrong with this fundamentally, since this is similar to how currency came about in real life. In effect you'd be delegating the problem of currency regulation to the player market, assuming your economy is designed "free" enough that they are free to use other forms of currency. (Freedom is a good thing!)

2) Players start to trade with NPCs who DO have currency, specificially to get a hold of it, so they can trade it for things they need. Even if everything in game has a use for the player, they will still need some things more than others, and that's where a trade economy comes into play.

If prices are gradually dropping because there is a greater abundance of goods to go around, this is okay as long as the currency unit can be further divided into smaller units. Yes, crafters and businesses would get less payment in nominal terms (or, wages would decrease), but their expenses would also be going down due to the gradually falling prices--so they negate each other.


I could blabber on more, but it's late and I need to go for now. :)

I'm just another designer wanting to implement a stable a fun economy in my games and I've run into these same problems.

I'm at a point where I don't see the actual point in creating "money" or a currency for players to judge the worth of every other item in the game around. I think depending on how effective your trade system is its going to be hard to judge just how much something is worth anyway since in some areas a particular item might be easier to obtain then others.

I'm building my economy around a very volatile era where combat is a part of nearly everyone’s life and I depend on the players to change the different situations themselves with mechanics I build within the game.

An auction house system like what WoW operates isn't a trading system at all, it’s a gold sink. There isn't any skill in playing the market within WoW or any games that have followed suit with the same mechanic.

I read some articles regarding EVE Online and a player run establishment called eBank and something like this just proves that if something is missing within your games economy and players have the power to add something themselves they will. I don't think spending too much time thinking about how to make the perfect economy is a good thing but just focus on not implementing the major faults to make a bad one, like endless mob's spawning gold. ^^

Here's my suggestion: Credit.

Play some Dwarf Fortress and look at how the dwarf economy works. There's an entirely imaginary currency (no in-game representation) generally referred to as "dwarfbucks", and when your fort gets upgraded to economic status (tax collector arrives, yadda yadda) each member of the society starts getting paid for doing things. If he brings in 50 dwarfbucks worth of lumber, he's creditted with 30 dwarfbucks, and can go to the weapon stockpile and pick up a nice 30-credit copper crossbow, whereupon that value will be debitted from his account. Room rents, shiny trinkets, handy tools, warm clothes, they're all purchased for use from shared stocks, and everyone earns money by contributing to the worth of the fortress as a whole.

For stuff you can't produce, you trade, fort-to-fort, with other civilizations. The elfs come by and you swap some stone amulets and cave spider silk rope for sunberries and caged leopards. The barter process brings in exotic goods and also assigns them a value, in dwarfbucks, that can be used when distributing them among the members.

So if your online game has some kind of "guild" or "clan" organization, have all the commodities owned first by the organization, and then pay a wage to each member based on their contribution. Pay them in credit, recognized only by the group. Mine some asteroids in EvE? Each participant gets "corp credit" equal to their share of the yield, minus 10% corp tax (used for paying non-producing jobs, like military patrols and administrators). Go on a raid in WoW? All non-claimed (purchased using credit, of course) loot gets disenchanted or auctioned, and the net value is divided among particiants, minus 10% guild tax (used for bank tabs etc.).

It's like DKP, but codified in and orchestrated to encourage serious cooperation and growth of the organization as a gameplay entity. Ideally, it would be impossible to be self-sufficient, making trade, embargos, raids and expeditions key to success.

Of course, this makes it a righteous bitch to play solo, but it also makes it possible to be a "member" of an organization without interacting with it in any way whatsoever. Sign on as a peon for a group, work at your own pace and whenever you do, make, or earn something, turn it in to the quartermaster (NPC, naturally, this needs to be automated and not contingent on some player being online) and take your paycheck, then spend it at the company store.

Need something they don't have? Put in a trade request, and the broker will add it to the import order from some nearby group. It'll get there in a few days. Can't wait? Don't have a trade agreement with anyone who sells them? Find one somewhere in the world, work out a trade with the owner, buy an equivalent value worth of stuff from your team and carry it to the guy's house, meet him face-to-face and do the deal the old-fashioned way.

The credit system doesn't preclude contracts or barter, and there's nothing preventing you from forging copper or silver coins (The dwarfs in DF will grab currency to physicalize their wealth, but it just has the value of the metal it's made from) and distributing them around.

Tebriel: I suppose that's what can happen. I just don't want to have to make money so small as to end up with players trading with just dust. But people using other items as currency, that would be cool to see how that develops.

Robert-Glen: I don't want a perfect economy persay, but I do want a stable one. Also, the roles of crafting and combat are split in my game. So what a crafter might thing is a worthy trade, a fighter might think it not as they have no need for the same items. I think it would be quite hard for them to just, "make their own." But then you never know what players are capable of.

Iron Chef Carnage: I think that system would run into a few problems. That is how most currency's around the world work now if I am not mistaken. People just carrying around paper or "credits" that represent the amount of funds their country or guild has. And what if this guild or country falls? Then the worth of their money goes down and they lose out.