I read a little bit about game economy and some people who want to try and create a stable economy in games. I was thiking.. why do the game designer need to work so hard to make a system work well? would it not be more sensible for the gamers to work the economy? wouldn't it make it far more satisfying for the players? useless items would not sell for any kind of profit, and really useful items would be a good market. players would set their own price for items and it would either work or not depending on what other players are willing to spend. they would not necessarily need coins or any kind of currency. players could create their own currency from token items. it could be really open ended. I think the part that a game designer could make sure that it works, is possible vendors. to program a system where the game vendors can measure selling quantity of a certain item and selling price and adjust automatically. the game wouldn't then require any kind of auction house system. any vendor can be used. each vendor can have it's own inventory stored in a database and will only have what players sell to it and will only pay good prices for items that sell on. i talk of course in terms of value against other stock items such as health potions etc.

Maybe if the vendors were more specific about what they trade FOR as well as what they sell. The town blacksmith might have a need for metals, and trade his swords for copper, iron, silver. But not an endless bottomless need.

If a given sword is made of iron pieces, and the players buy that sword, then his stock of iron pieces goes down, and he needs more iron. So he will accept iron in trade for the sword. But also maybe the players buy a more delicately constructed gold and silver necklace that he produces. So he will also accept gold in payment for the iron sword.

Then we have a set of par levels for the vendor. When his stock of a given raw material falls below par, he will accept payment in that material. And if he has an overabundance of a raw material, he won't.

The tricky part comes when "deciding" what those par levels should be. Ideally they should be based on local demand. If the players buy out his stock of swords, and he uses up his raw materials to replenish the store, then he could bump up his storage for iron. And if the players trade an abundance of silver for his swords, but don't buy any of his silver jewelry, then he could bump down his allocated shelf space for silver.

From a developer perspective, checking the vendor's current shelf size on various raw materials would then be a rough measurement of the local demand and usage of products and materials.

In regards to having a gamer-controlled economy, there are good things and bad things:
A gamer controlled enconomy creates a more interactive experience, where the gamers feel in control of their own world.

The economy would surely evolve into a very small percentage of the population of your world having a very large percentage of the wealth. This may work in real life, but in a game world it would cause a large flaw in the fabric of your game.

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An economy is the business of trading stuff between people. It is a game that people play in order to maximize their happiness. And as in any game, there are some who do better than others. To have a few great, many not-so-great, and teaming masses of mediocre -- is it really wrong?

It's an area of game development that has significant psychological barriers to progress. It's easy to marvel at how an ant colony optimizes it's hunting trails. Or how a river cuts to the sea. The behaviors emerge not from individual ants or molecules of water, but from the interactions of many hundreds and thousands of them.

I would suggest that the same is true of massively multiplayer games. It might be profitable to Conceive of the players as an ocean of thousands of interacting agents, rather than a bunch of individuals. A living organism is composed of many cells that differentiate and specialize to create something greater than a cell.

[Edited by - AngleWyrm on August 29, 2009 8:28:35 PM]

Game designers need to strike a balance of the cash that players have vs the items and weapons they can buy. If you have a lot of cash and can buy lots of healing potions, then you are working around the game designer's linear path of progression. Designers incorporate money sinks such as decaying weapons and armors, or level based replacement of gear to keep a player's wealth in line.

As an example

Player A needs to kill X mobs to get from level 1 to level 2. At level 2 the player is able to obtain a new more powerful weapon at a cost Y. The designer just needs to divide cost Y by X to get the average loot drop per monster to allow the player to buy the new weapon and have a little coinage left over.

Incorporating crafting into the game, potentially allows for more player interaction if done right. However most game crafting is linear and requires little player interaction.

Example #1 - Linear Crafting
A sword requires 3 iron bars all done by one person

Example #2 - Interactive Crafting
A sword requires 3 iron bars, a copper hilt, and a leather strap
A copper hit comes from a metal smith
A leather strap comes from a leather maker
A smithy puts all components together

In example two, the sword is much more valuable as there has been more effort. Hopefully in example 2, the swordsmith does not have an inexhaustible supply otherwise the value of the made sword is equal roughly to the value of the swordsmith's sword.

My thought is to to remove vendors totally unless they are player controlled. By having player controlled vendors allows a more intricate economy. Of course vendor licenses should be limited in number, cost money and be good for a certain amount of time. (there is that money sink again)

Some other thoughts.

1. All items should be useful in a a game with a functional economy. Useless or trash items serve no purpose except act as a form of coin. If all items are useful, it adds an extra level of activity to find out what the item is used for within a crafting economy and allows the player to either sell it to a vendor or sell it to another player who needs the item. If the game has no crafting, then useless items should be available.


2. Vendors should not have an inexhaustible supply of items to sell. They should only sell what they buy.

3. Auction houses or player market houses should be regional rather than global so there is trade of goods between locations created. Some items should be more available in some areas than others to act upon the variation of price from one area to the next.

4. Unless there is player controlled land which costs money to buy, the fact that one or a few players have a lot more money than others does not affect the economy unless the player is cornering the market on a certain item or class of goods.

The MMO Perfect World touches on some of these topics.

Players can set up shop anywhere. They just set what they have for sale, what they want, and how much of each thing they want to buy & sell. Then at any time they can roll out their welcome mat, log off the game and go to dinner. The game places an automated shop, and other players can buy/sell what that player has/wants while he is away.

Treasure drops differ a bit from region to region on the main map. An interesting thing develops: Cities by the river. In Perfect World, there are warp gates which form the main traffic hub, and players set up their shops near the 'docks' where these warp gates allow passage.

gamedogma, I found your post most enjoyable. you are certainly on the same wavelength with your words. some interesting new ideas there too, you have certainly set my brain ticking :D
I'll see if i have any good thoughts to post tomorrow.

anglewyrm, I did play perfect world before but i did not get very far. that prospect of cities by rivers and by warp gates is a very interesting concept and i like it a lot. I'll have to get ahold of that again and give it another look.

gamedogma,your thought is useful,Thanks:)

Are you familiar with the game golemizer? (www.golemizer.com)

In essence, it is a morpg with a player guided economy. The economy of the game is somewhat complex, and you can only get the raw materials from the world... everything else must be crafted by skills or bought from other players.

Quite a cool concept, until you realize that the great part of the game is done by crafting... so everybody wants to craft things and almost no one buys it... and the few ways to play dungeon crawling (and getting gold) are boring in my opinion, so these things kind of limit the game. Also, you have very few tools for automation in the game, so a lot of the selling stuff has to be done manually (you do get to place an NPC with goods to sell at a fixed price, but that is the best you'll get)

However, don't get the game wrong by my harsh review, it is at least a nice implementation of a very complicated idea.

thank you for the suggestion, I will definately take a look at this game.