Quote:| It will be the opposite. If they lose items on death, then players lose resources, which increases the cost of resources and the value of items. There's no reason why an increase in demand without an increase in supply will make prices go down. Prices will only go down if you somehow get a bonus when creating items in bulk. |
That's a valid point that I wasn't really thinking much about. What SHOULD happen I suppose is that items being lost on death would lower the resources in the economy, which amounts to decreasing supply. However, when items are lost on death, they are also less valuable to people, so demand is decreased as well. But obviously demand is also increased by people needing the item again and again. So there are competing effects, making the result ambiguous. The effect on price would depend on the magnitudes of the three effects as well as the elasticity of supply and demand. I suppose we can't really know those things.
Regardless of the effect on price, though, I still am mildly against the idea of losing items on death just because I think most players don't enjoy that. I also think it discourages players from fighting, which is something you seemed to touch on later on in your post. The benefits to nations are communal, for the most part, which just encourages free riders who don't participate in nation vs nation fights because they don't want to lose items. To some degree, you shouldn't really get a total free rider issue as someone has no incentive to play the game if they are going to avoid the major premise of the game. Furthermore, I would have the amount of the money stream a player gets be based on how much fighting they did, which would at least in some way incentivize individual players to fight. However, I still am not comfortable disincentivizing fighting PvP, so I would want to avoid the forms of resource sinks that have been mentioned.
Quote:
Free money is a bad idea because your major goal as a developer is to create ways for players to spend their time. If territory can just be held then you are providing rewards without necessarily demanding time. This IMO wastes the limited amount of rewards you have at your disposal. It also passes up an opportunity for you to provide players something to do. It also requires you to create a land ownership system that is almost guaranteed to be problematic. |
I think I have addressed this issue by saying that players would get a percent of the money stream each day based on how much they actually did that day.
In this way, then, it is actually not AT ALL different from a normal quest system in giving incentive to do stuff. This is because the money goes to people in proportion with how much they did, just like the money in a normal system would go to people in proportion with how many quests they completed.
So let me give an example. Say in a Normal MMO there are 5 players. Player 1 completes 4 quests today. Player 2 completes 3 quests. Player 3 completes 2 quests, Player 4 completes 1 quest, and Player 5 does nothing. Each quest gives 100 gold, lets say. Thus, at the end of the day, Player 1 has 400 gold, Player 2 has 300, Player 3 has 200, Player 4 has 100, and Player 5 has 0.
The total gold input into the economy of that Normal MMO was 1000. So let's say in my game I have a nation with 1000 "free gold" being put into the economy today. Just as before, Player 1 completes 4 quests; Player 2 completes 3 quests. Player 3 completes 2 quests, Player 4 completes 1 quest, and Player 5 does nothing. Players get gold in proportion with what percent of the activity they accounted for. Player 1 did 40% of the activity, so he gets 400 of the 100 gold. Player 2 will end up with 300, Player 3 with 200, Player 4 with 100, and Player 5 with 0. Notice these are the exact same values as before.
The incentive for each individual to perform quests is still there; they are competing with other players of their nation for the limited amount of money each day. The money they get amounts to a salary for the activities they partook in. They are getting the same amount of money for the same activities; its just in one case they get the money from the quest drops themselves, and the other they get the money from the money stream. It amounts to the same thing in the end though. The only real difference is that in my system, the player base has control of how much gold is input into the economy each day, thus giving them control over inflation. If it's a choice between giving incentives for questing OR giving incentives for questing AND giving players control of monetary policy in the world, I'd certainly take the second one.
What you are probably thinking is that this system breaks down if everyone realizes that they could collectively decide to spend almost no time doing anything, and the money stream is the same either way if they still hold the same territory. What I mean is, if every player does 1 quest a day, they'd all get the same amount of the money as they would if they all did 10 quests a day. However, this does not concern me for a couple reasons. First off, the player base would presumably be large enough that a collective decision would likely be impossible to make. Most importantly, though, it fails to pass some simple game theory. Here's what I mean by that. If every player has decided to do only 1 quest a day and reap the same rewards as if they did more, then 1 player could decide to do 10 quests instead and get a massive amount of the money while greatly decreasing everyone else's take. Thus, there would always be a huge incentive to break any type of agreement like that because agreement breakers would stand to gain greatly from it. So it would never come to that.
In any case, under some odd circumstance where it did come to that (and I can't think of one), there could always be maximum monetary rewards set for every activity. If the total activity of players was so low that they all got the maximum rewards for the very little bit they did and there was still money left over, then they could lose that left over money outright. This would easily discourage a nation from intentionally decreasing activity, as they would be hurting themselves by only taking a small amount of the money they should be getting.
Quote:| As for territory PVP, NPC guards are fine and should be included but they are NOT going to stop midnight raids or 4 am raids or whatever. |
Normal NPC guards would certainly be included but a king would be able to buy NPC/Player mercenaries as well, which would allow them to cover random time slots even more if they were worried.
Certainly, though, 4am raids would still be very effective. First off, though, I don't think that's much of a problem. If the players of a nation are able to secretly plan an attack on a territory at an odd time like that and pull it off, then that's great. They are the more organized nation, and deserve reward for that. Also, they wouldn't get rewarded TOO much for it because they'd possibly only have control of the territory for a few hours before a counterattack is launched. If the counterattack were to be successful, the effect of the 4am raid would be minimal. So the reward of the attack would be based on being able to hold the territory subsequently.
Secondly, I think there's a fairly simple way of limiting this from being TOO effective, and it is something that I have already been thinking about a lot. Kind of like in WAR Online, each territory could have control be based on multiple different things. There could be a major keep to be controlled that would count for a lot. However, there could also be other PvP areas (mostly for low and medium level players) where players fight over other places/monuments/etc. Control of those could count towards control of the territory as well. I mentioned instanced battles in various modes like team deathmatch or something. Each territory could have lots of its own instanced battles going on each day, with victory in those counting towards control of the territory that day. Player completion of any PvE quests that day in the territory could count slightly towards control (as it can be assumed the people of the territory would rally around a nation who solved their random problems). Lastly, there could be a cultural component, where the closer you are to your nation's capital city, the bigger automatic boost in control you'd have.
The point of all that is this. Players might be able to organize a big raid on a keep at 4am and take the keep. In a closely contested territory, that might easily be enough to tip the scales of control in their favor. And that's great because organization and surprise should be rewarded. However, if that nation was not in control of any of the low/medium level areas and they got beaten up in instanced battles in the territory that day, then that 4am attack might not be enough to shift control to them. Thus, a 4am mega-attack would be (and should be) a powerful strategy, but it wouldn't be all powerful because the nation would need to have had some success in the territory outside of the mega attack in order to control the territory afterwards. This would be especially true in territories right near another nation's capital city, as you'd likely need a perfect storm of factors in order to get control due to a massive cultural effect going against you.
Quote:| Your attempt to include multiple types of gameplay need to be integrated with your game better IMO. The ability to create a game where players can sign in and have multiple options in terms of their gameplay and have all of those options mix together right is not easy. It is a major reason WAR struggles IMO. |
I don't think it would be badly integrated. Gameplay would include the following things:
- Battles for control of certain places in a territory
- Instanced battles in the territory in various different modes
- Random skirmishes with players from other nations if you want
- Dynamic Player versus Monster encounters in territories you control
- Player versus Monster quests from NPCs
- Battles between guilds for control of a nation
- Ruling guild policymaking (ie. taxation etc etc)
- The ability to be a mercenary or assassin
- Crafting items and trading them
- Possibly a Player-Story
- Organized 1v1 (or 3v3, 5v5 etc etc) Duels (for testing out power builds and such)
These are a lot of game modes but they are almost all integrated around one concept. There are multiple nations fighting for control of valuable territories and the players are basically, in a sense, soldiers in their nation's army. The territories provide the money to pay the soldiers and the resources to outfit them with weapons and other items. Battles for control of certain places (like keeps) in territories obviously fits into this, as those are just important areas integral to territorial control. The instanced battles conceptually amount to other battles taking place in the territory, but not for those important places. Random skirmishes are easy to justify, as they are fights between opposing soldiers who happen to run into each other. The more dynamic player versus monster encounters are integrated in the sense that monsters attack villages and such in your territories, making the territories less profitable if they succeed in killing villagers, taking over a village, etc etc. Other quests are still integrated in that doing things for people in a territory ultimately gets you the goodwill and support of people in the territory, helping you control it. Battles between guilds for control of the nation are obviously just internal politics and strife in the nations, where people might differ in opinion about policymaking, or simply just want the power themselves. Mercenaries and assassins are integrated as pawns used by kings to keep control of their nation or to help in their attacks against others. The crafting of items amounts to players who are helping to produce items to keep their nation's war machine outfitted with the best stuff.
So all of that stuff really seems to me to be perfectly integrated (unless im confused by what sense you're using the word integrated). All the different forms of gameplay are based around the same concept of war between nations for valuable territories. The different types of play just amount to different ways in which a player is helping their nation's cause.
The only things that wouldn't really be integrated much are the Player-Story and organized duels between players. That doesn't really bother me though. The nature of a story mode in MMOs is that it can't really be integrated because every player has to be able to complete the same story. Thus there can't be many effects on the gameworld from your actions in the story (the only effects would be seen in instanced areas made for each individual player, such as an area that is his home or something). So there will be something of a disconnect between the story mode and the rest of what's going on, but I'm fine with that. As for organized duels, I'm fine with that being a separate thing as well. It would just be part of the world in that there would be various places you could go where there's an "arena" or something where people watch fights. You could be a combatant in that arena. It's not part of the nation vs nation stuff, but it still makes sense.
Quote:Where do non crafted items fit into this economic model? Can I find the same items in dungeons, killing monsters, or at the corner store? If so this will have dramatic impact on the value of crafted items.
If a sword of slaying takes 1000 steel and a week to acquire enough steel to make. It should have a base value of 10 gold per steel + 1 weeks effort, this might be adjusted by market rates but lets say its worth at least 20,000 gold. If I’m only competing on this sale with other crafters then that a perfectly reasonable since it factors in both material costs plus the much more valuable resource of player effort. However if shops always stock a minimum number of these swords or you have 1 in 10 chance of getting one for killing an elite goblin. Then value drops dramatically as the adventurers have far more control on the market then the crafters. In which case it might be difficult to make a profit on crafting.
This of course could be moot if crafted items can potentially be of better quality their found or store bought equivalent. That way any player who puts in the time can get an average quality sword of slaying but if you want a master crafted sword of slaying then you need buy it from a skilled crafter. |
First off, NPC shops wouldn't carry anything that wasn't sold to them by players. So you wouldn't get NPC shops undercutting player prices because they wouldn't be stocking some minimum number of an item at all. They'd simply be another possible buyer for crafted goods, who then always tries to sell the goods they buy for a profit. So unless another player crafter was willing to sell an NPC that sword of slaying for a lot less than you want for it, then the NPC won't be undercutting you.
Quest rewards are something I have not entirely decided on yet. I think players should probably get some rewards for quests in the form of money and items. Since they are already being paid to quest in the form of getting a share of their nations money stream based on how much they do each day, the quest rewards wouldn't need to be astronomical. But I think they'd need to be there in order to keep the cool factor of finishing a quest.
However, you can't have quests providing the best items because then everyone would just do the quest and get the best item, taking away the importance of crafting, and thus to a lesser degree, the importance of holding territory. On the other hand, if the items you get are too lame, then the quest itself becomes somewhat lame and there's less incentive to do it.
The solution I think I've found is this. A quest should provide rewards based on something like how long it has been since it has been completed and how many times it has been completed. So if you are the very first person to complete a quest, then you would get a Master Sword of Slaying from it. The quality of the reward would keep going down from there the more it was completed. Pretty soon, the item provided by the quest would be of significantly lesser quality than the normal crafted item. If no one completed the quest for a long time, though, you might be able to go back and do it and get a Master Sword of Slaying again.
I think this is good for a few reasons. First, it keeps quests being cool. People will certainly get great items from quests. However, the number of great items wouldn't be enough that it would flood the market for great items and lower their price much. There wouldn't be any "I'm not gonna buy your Master Sword of Slaying for 20,000 gold because I can just do ____ quest and get it for free." Secondly, on a slightly unrelated note, this would keep people doing all sorts of quests. There wouldn't be an "best quest" that gives the best items because if people overdid that "best quest" it wouldn't give good rewards anymore and other overlooked quests would. Thus, people would end up doing everything about equally which is good IMO. Lastly, it would create some nice drama about who completed a new quest first. WoW has some of that, but there'd be an institutionalized reward for the party that completed something first, which I think is cool.
[Edited by - lessthanjake on September 22, 2010 7:59:03 AM]
