|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Economy
Reasonable Cash Economy
Taxes
Player to Player Economy/Vendors
Keeping Magic Items Uncommon
Item Decay
Every game, I swear, EVERY GAME that allows players to make money in a multiplayer environment somehow gets its economy completely blown out of proportion. UO was flooded with gold from unfettered mule tailor salesmen even before the advent of duping gold and GM's spawning castle deeds for profit. The Asheron's Call pyreal is worth slightly less than a German mark circa 1923. Even the apparently ultra-stingy EQ cash flow was made meaningless eventually just through relentless repeating cash quests and stupid economic decisions that created overnight millionaires.
One question that this hyperinflation begs to pose is: who is minting all of this money?
The traditional unit of currency in all of the big three, and indeed in most fantasy games of all types, is the precious metal coin. In UO it's the gold piece. In Asheron's Call, the pyreal. In Everquest, it's the traditional D&D money system of a mixed assortment of metal coins. All of this money can be considered real, as it is represented by actual coins and is assumed to have intrinsic value. Even the trade notes of Asheron's Call are not paper money in the sense that modern U.S. currency is paper money, since a trade note can be redeemed immediately by any sufficiently well-off merchant for its value in coin, and the note itself isn't even usable as a means to directly purchase goods and services. This means that someone has found a sufficient quantity of the metal required to make these coins, mined it, smelted it, and minted it into a universally recognizable unit of trade. Barring duplication bugs and crooked administrators, the amount of this real money circulating around in any MMORPG seems to indicate that there are mountains of precious metals right near the surface (making it minable/pannable with pre-water pump technology).
Even leaving aside realism for a second, the effects of a hyperinflux of cash into the game economy are obvious, and have been demonstrated time and time again. Money becomes worthless, king's ransoms are given to newbies as soon as they enter the system (making them, in effect, not newbies anymore), and while the price of many standard goods and services doesn't increase for some strange reason, you wind up with newly implemented items like hair dyes having price tags more appropriate to an earldom. Items which were envisioned as being status symbols, like the top quality of store-bought plate mail, are now mere afterthoughts, and if the price of plate is not increased through inflation, you either have a situation where there are NO goods of any kind for sale anymore as they have all been bought out by the player-tycoons, or else you have to give up on the idea of realistic manufacturing and allow everyone to buy unlimited plate, forcing the assumption that somewhere below the earth there are about 8 million hapless artisans churning the stuff out on a daily basis.
Just to twist the economic dagger in the backs of developers, the "closed economy" that Ultima Online was originally envisioned with does not work at all. In a closed economy, the world has a limited number of resources of all types, and that's that. Iron turned into a helmet is gone from the ground forever, only returning when the helmet is destroyed, presumably broken down into ore by some sort of super-bacteria. The closed economy has a lot of theoretical advantages, but the fact that it means there are limited fixed resources screws 99% of the playing population, as the first guys out of the gate in final will monopolize these resources, filling their houses with stacks and stacks of useless weapons and other goods, in some mistaken belief that hoarding is a way to "win." The guys who come in after them have no chance.
Operating on the assumption that a closed economy has no chance of success, the challenge then becomes a way to manage an open economy (where materials appear out of thin air on a regular basis) while avoiding hyperinflation. The only way to do this successfully is to make sure there enough unavoidable money sinks in the game to continually drain resources away from the players, while trying to maintain a certain level of "fun" for the inevitably greedy subscriber. This section is primarily concerned with cash money, so we'll leave the question of item management for later. (See "Item Decay.")
Various money sinks have been implemented after the fact (hyperinflation) in all of the big three MMORPG's, but they never work. The reason for this is that in order to remain unobtrusive, the cash sinks are always optional, and if they are useless sinks (like buying a meaningless title), players won't go for it. At the other end is offering sufficiently big carrots for the players to pay out for, which lends itself to game mechanic inflation. Pay lots of gold for a superweapon that is better than anything in the game, for instance. This does nothing to stop the influx of huge amounts of money, and only contributes to an inevitable breaking of the game. Note that this and other "solutions" for inflation are not limited to gold disposal concerns. The shard and key economy of Asheron's Call, having supplanted the hopelessly broken coin economy, is riddled with this sort of nonsense.
Requiring players to pay for advancement or education isn't a bad idea in itself, but it doesn't halt the problem of hyperinflation. If you require players to pay tuition of 1000 gold to the Wizarding College to learn the deeper mysteries of theurgy, this is a pretty good idea and contributes to cash draining, but if 20% of the world is made up of multimillionaire hoarders, all this means is that after a while it becomes a nonfactor to anyone who can ask the rich guys for a thousand gold.
There are really only three ways to effectively control the flow of cash to the player in an automated persistent world:
First, consider the fact that most of the time a guy spent after a historical battle was fixing his stuff. The spoils of war in the form of armor, weapons, and shields off corpses are not going to be in mint condition. Most of it will be flat-out useless, and what might have some value is going to require a lot of work to fix up if someone wants to bother doing it. Then again, the local tribe of goblins might be barely out of the neolithic age, especially if they have a nomadic raiding existence that doesn't contribute to high level manufacturing. Not much of a market for stone axes and bronze knives in an iron age town. Also consider that some traditional high ticket items like plate suits are a big pain to take off their dead owners, especially with a spear stuck through them, and once you get it off them, you can't just fix it up and put it on... it's not possible to fit these things generically. If you're really down and out, maybe you can sell it to the smith as scrap, or to an eccentric collector or museum if you are very lucky. In cases where equipment of the fallen might be resold at an open market, a man might get a reputation as a vulture of the battlefield, resulting in worse reactions from people who know about his corpse-stripping activities. For the most part, though, battlefield spoils were typically vultured by the local peasants after a battle in the hopes that they might be able to sell it off to an itinerant adventurer or bandit for a few pennies to supplement their poverty-stricken existence.
Expensive component costs in MMORPG's are most often associated with mages, who have to shell out every day for bizarre herbs and powders to perform magical feats. However, you can easily expand this into other professions through the simple and logical system of item decay. A fighter who routinely goes out to battle in a suit of plate and a round shield should have to pay some rather exorbitant upkeep costs to keep that gear in order. Archers need arrows, of course, and possibly other sundries like restringing, laquers, what have you. There should always be a way for players to not have to pay these upkeep costs, especially if they are newbies or self-proclaimed hermits with few possessions, but the sort of things these people will be using (hide armors, spears, etc.) should be of the sort that one could reasonably repair himself given sufficient skill and resourcefulness, and should not expand into equipment like metallic armors that require a considerable manufacturing base to produce.
Taxes are dealt with in the following section.
Taxation is an anaethma to game designers, who react to the idea of taxes the way that most modern people do: with the idea that it is "not fun." However, regular taxation in the medieval sense is the perfect solution to pack ratting and hoarding, and a great way to deal with hyperinflation. The feudal system of taxation was not based on income, as it is in modern America. Instead, a tax collector (or the sheriff) comes out to your house, or into your boarding room, with a couple of legbreakers, estimates the value of all your stuff, and assesses a tax based on your total estimated net worth. This means that if you have the prototypical house full of useless but pricey junk, you will pay a significant tax. If you don't have the cash to cover it, he grabs some of your stuff instead (usually stuff of a higher value than what you owe). Assuming you have an offline activity system, this property tax is collected at regular intervals regardless of your online status, getting around the old standby system of "mules that hold all your crap for you." One might always try to smuggle or otherwise conceal one's possessions, but then they run the risk of having it all confiscated (if hidden within the protectorate of the local nobility) or having it stolen from you (if outside the protectorate). One might also attack the tax collector if this is feasable, but then he is subject to strict penalties under the justice system (see "Justice Systems for Persistent Worlds").
Taxes can be applied in other ways to control the massive income potential of someone who plays the game for coin 24/7. Entering a typical medieval town without special disposition usually entailed a head tax for each person and each animal. Entering town with a whole bunch of coin and other goods usually entailed an additional tax on the stuff you were introducing into the economy. Different city-states generally used different systems of coin, and so your stack of crowns from Aramica needs to be changed for doubloons in Portsmouth if you want to buy anything, usually at usurious rates. (Historically, it was often illegal to even be in possession of external currencies, and this was subject to heavy fines.) Once again, one can try to smuggle goods between towns, with the risk of repercussions appropriate to smuggling (confiscation at the very least, and possibly fines and/or jailing if the material is considered a controlled substance).
Taxes can be used as a balancing device to more effectively apply the "zero sum rule" to differing city-states. A realistically conceived community's services are based directly on how much food it can produce, and how many people are there. A small village may have very low taxes of its own, but most of its populace is out in the fields harvesting food, so there aren't many services available, maybe a general store with limited inventory, an inn that doubles as a tavern, and a stable attached to the inn. As the size of the community grows, you have more "excess people" who are not required to be in the fields, and are therefore able to open more specialized and better shops, and practice more trades. You also begin to run into problems like sanitation, crime and protection from raiders, and you need city services to provide for sewers, aldermen, and a militia, ergo you need higher taxes. By the time you have a city capable of supporting things like a weapons dojo and a university of magical arts, your population is large enough to require even more services, and a bunch of officials to make sure they run properly. If a player really feels he needs to be in Avalon because they have great shops and a school of thaumaturgy, his cost of living is going to be high, including his taxes. (He can always try to camp outside the city limits and come in for classes, but he's still paying a head tax for immigration, and will be susceptible to bandits.)
Take the example of early Asheron's Call, and assume there is a taxation system in each town. Each town is assumed to be producing enough food, goods and services to support its intrinsic population and some others, namely adventurers. Arwic becomes insanely popular because it has the best prices for almost everything an adventurer wants, and has great proximity to a number of highly desirable locations. Suddenly the town's population is huge, swelled by adventurers, their servants (mules), and the people who hang on the edges of the adventurers to profit from them, or even just to be near them. Suddenly you don't have enough food for everyone, and the city is filthy! Food must be imported from other areas, city employees need to be hired to clean up after the adventurers and their caravans, etc. Taxes must go up in this situation. If the population stays excessively high long enough (a very long time), the city may grow to accomodate its new needs with permanent sewers, more farmland, etc. Taxes will then not need to be so dramatic, but they will still be significantly higher than when Arwic was a one-horse town.
Taxes can also be used by a creative enough content designer as a plot device. A change in the rate of taxation can be seen as an indicator that things are happing. For example, a town may need to quickly raise troops to deal with an imminent invasion from a neighboring kingdom, and taxes soar to cover it. Player characters can pay the new taxes, or possibly get some relief by volunteering to go fight the invaders. Driving off the invaders may help to reduce the emergency tax rates. Another example might be one in which a crooked monarch decides he wants to squeeze the city so he can buy solid gold bidets for his bathroom. Taxes go up with no justification. If the players figure out that the taxation is rooted in a corrupt bureaucracy, can they incite and lead a successful revolt?
One more thing about taxation systems, or any game system that threatens to become too complicated and clunky for the players: it must be streamlined. This means that when you make a transaction that requires a commission or tax, it is automatically deducted from the monies exchanged without having to make a special trip to the collector. When the sherriff shows up at your house to collect taxes and you happen to be there, you need to be able to just hit a button that says, "Pay," or else attack or flee. If you don't want to be bothered with an independent tax collector AI, just handle taxes automatically on login, based on the amount of time since the last tax payment. You should never force a player to fill out a tax form when you could just have him press a button.
Player to Player Economy/Vendors
One of the most important parts of creating a game which is immersive is providing many ways for players to interact with each other besides the tired "hunt in groups" idea. Players selling and trading items to each other is a fantastic avenue of interaction, if it's not horribly annoying. Because players are on- and off-line at different times, the process of direct barter becomes even more frustrating than usual, and often it's practically impossible. Therefore, there needs to be an in-game system of shops and shopkeeps that deal specifically in player-created goods. Right now, Ultima Online has the only player vendor system in MMORPG's, and for many UO players of a mercantile bent, it's the only reason to play.
A proper player vendor system, ideally, has to have a number of characteristics to make it useful.
A 3D interface like that of Asheron's Call and Everquest lends itself well to popup shopping menus for the buyer, much like dealing with any NPC vendor. The owner's menu may be more complex, which is fine as long as it doesn't become an unnavigable kludge of commands and submenus.
Accessibility to artisan players who wish to sell their stuff to other players opens up a new area of possibility for game world systems. Employing a shopkeeper is generally considered to be an act open to relatively well-off merchants; peasants still hawk their corn themselves in the farmer's market. The expense of hiring a vendor employee can therefore be somewhat high, keeping the vendor count at a reasonable level so as to reduce strain on the server. However, there is also the possibility of the consignment shop, or pawn shop, to players who lack the means or the motive to maintain their own little stall on Market street. A consignment vendor NPC would be willing to hawk limited quantities (meaning usually 1-2 at a time) of player loot to the public who is just dying to get their hands on another set of bloody, smelly used chainmail with a big spear hole through the middle of it. The consignment vendor can sell the item at whatever price the player wants for it within reason, which provides an interesting game of market analysis as the consigning player checks out what his neighbors are asking for bloody, smelly, used chainmail with a spear hole so he doesn't price himself out of the market. Generally, a pawn shop guy will not deal in high-ticket items. Within about a week or so, the player checks back in with the pawnbroker, collects cash (minus a big commission) if the item was sold, else taking the item back, or maybe offering to sell it to the broker for an extremely low price... pawnbrokers are always looking for cheap inventory to sell to black market speculators and such. If the player leaves the item with the pawnbroker for too long and it doesn't sell, the broker just keeps it for the trouble of holding such an unwanted piece of trash, taking it out of the item economy. The facts that the broker will not deal with high value items and will only take one or two at a time is an intentional annoyance to players, as are his higher-than-standard commissions, encouraging them to either not loot so much or go through the motions to get their own shop.
Accessibility to prospective shoppers is of obvious importance to the merchant player. Location, location, location. In Ultima Online, this made certain prime areas with lots of foot traffic extremely valuable to player merchants looking for a spot to park their vendors. However, since the placement of vendors in Ultima Online is directly tied to house ownership (vendors need to be attached to a house), one is just as likely to find the vendor you want outside a dungeon entrance, in the middle of a godforsaken swamp, or in a notoriously dangerous PK hunting grounds. The out-of-the-way shop is a good idea for number of reasons, say travellers down on their luck or for the business of people unable to enter town (i.e. murderers), but in real life, hawkers tended to congregate in market squares or certain areas of town where everyone could go and browse. This was especially important in a world without convenient mass transit and broadcast advertising. Therefore, in a realistically designed middle ages-type game, a vendor contract would usually be entered to get the services of a guy who stands around Market Street along with all the other vendors. As more and more vendors are hired, "Market Street" starts to expand, is eventually cut off by city regulations, and becomes very crowded. If the demand for vendors in this area continues to rise (as it would in an MMORPG filled with starry-eyed entrepeneurs), the vendors form a guild and start charging higher prices to take advantage of the supply-demand ratio. Eventually this takes care of itself, and vendors reach a price range which is more or less consistent with the demand for their services, driving would-be merchants who don't realize a profit through vending into another line of business, creating a new opening.
Another option for merchant players is the self-contained shop. Far more high-falutin' than hiring a guy to sell snake oil to people on Market Street, a shop becomes possible with building construction and/or ownership. A shop is naturally more expensive to maintain, as now you have to pay for the land, the building, and its maintenance in addition to the shopkeep, but might allow the player to sell bulkier items, and more of them, than one guy on Market Street could haul around in his carpetbag. It's also a landmark, and a mark of prestige for the owning player, who can then tell the story of how he worked his way up from a street urchin to apprentice bowyer to the proprietor of the most popular weapons shop in town.
Ability to buy goods is not currently implemented in the UO vendor system. Allowing a player vendor to purchase materials fro the populace at large opens up new avenues of moneymaking for beginning craftsmen and materials harvesters (i.e. lumberjacks, miners, farmers, and the like) who aren't well-off enough to have a shop of their own. In order to do this, the controlling player needs to be able to divide the funds held by his employee into three categories:
An interesting possibility in a system where player-run merchants have the ability to buy goods at set prices is direct trade between player merchants. Say Andy's merchant is looking for large quantities of ginseng root and is willing to pay 4 crowns per pound, and Deborah's merchant happens to be selling ginseng at 3 crowns per pound, and they happen to be operating the the same general area. After a while (periodically checked instead of constantly to reduce lag from constant checks), the two merchant may become aware of this, and a deal is struck between them directly. Deb's merchant sells her ginseng at 3 crowns per pound, and Andy's merchant pays 4 per pound for them. The excess cash can be considered to be skimmed off the top in a player vendor kickback scheme in addition to whatever commissions they may earn. This has the advantage of making things simpler for the players involved, but a designer may wish to disallow this sort of trade, as it removes a possible avenue of profit for particularly impoverished players who may want to make some money by running the ginseng themselves.
Maintenance fees and commissions include things like salary, handling charges, sales commissions, and other sundry concerns for the shopkeeper (like a guy to watch for pickpockets, maybe). These provide a good source of cash draining to prevent flooding in an open-ended economy, and can be considered a trade tax levied on society's theoretically wealthiest members, i.e. the merchants. A salary is a fixed amount paid to the shopkeeper, and can be influenced by factors like the demand for vendors in a limited vendor per city system, the status of the vendor (i.e. hawker on the street versus a true shopkeep), and expertise. "Expertise" reflects the knowledge of the vendor to sell certain types of goods. For example, a guy working in Bob's House of Polearms, which sells polearms and also buys raw iron from the locals for smithing, has to be conversant in the general fields of melee weaponry and metallurgy. A guy working in Alicia's Everything Shop, which deals in a wide variety of goods including arms, armor, bows, magical reagents, clothing, leather goods, etc., has to have a broader knowledge and is therefore worth more money. His salary should be a little higher for his expertise.
Commissions can be earned for any transaction involving the vendor. This is probably best handled as a flat percentage of the amount of the transaction. A guy working for Robbie's House of Incredibly Powerful and Fantastically Expensive Magic Weapons should earn more in commissions than the guy working at Harold's Animal Feed Store, unless animal feed is an amazingly high-volume business. Commissions can also subsume any trade taxes the local government levies on marketplace transactions.
Using this model, we see that there are three basic classes of vendors available to players who want to buy or sell to other players:
It's inevitable that as soon as players figure out that monster X routinely drops treasure type Y, they will all be gunning for monster type X. If the system has loopholes, they will find a way to kill monster X at a minimum of risk and effort expended. Pretty soon your world is filled to the brim with Broadswords of Nuclear Destruction. The consequences of over-availability of magical items in a game world are pretty obvious, but in case they aren't to you, they include (short list) power inflation, twinking, cash inflation (as the excess/lower tier items are sold off), elimination of the usefulness of player crafters, etc. It also destroys any sense of wonder one might ascribe to these devices in any reasonable work of fantasy. Elric: "Stormbringer? Bleah, it sucks; I give better stuff to newbie guildmates. Mule it."
There are three passive ways to effectively limit an overabundance of magic items in your campaign world:
Making them go away is just as important for magic items as it is for standard stuff like suits of armor, gold, and shields. If these items are unbreakable/non-droppable/unlosable, your world will fill up with them regardless of limitations you set on availability. Wear and tear would certainly factor in to this, as does loss due to death, but other, more annoying devices can be used. Magical devices are a favorite target for thieves, alone or hired for the job. NPC nobles and collectors might pay high prices for them, which becomes important if your cash economy is functioning properly (i.e. the money really makes a difference). If things get too ridiculous, black boxes from pen and paper games can be used, like the ethereal daemon who feeds on such items, and will certainly be attracted to a player decked out in them. Attaching a sense of danger to the ownership of magic items also helps insure that they are being carried by characters of a power level appropriate to their possession, instead of the newbie decked out in twink gear.
Limited use items applies primarily to things like alchemical potions and the like. In a standard pen and paper fantasy campaign, these are far and away the most common type of magical item. Potions of healing, dust of disappearance, maybe a whistle that summons creatures to fight for you 3 times before it breaks... as long as these are the predominant forms of magical loot players can get, their built-in disposability takes care of item inflation by itself (although you still need to be careful, especially if players are fabricating these things).
Of course, in a world where magic items are rightfully limited in availability, you need to provide players with alternatives to beef up their arsenal to a reasonable degree. This is done through other economic measures, primarily control of the cash economy to avoid hyperinflation (so a suit of plate is something special), and giving player crafters the ability to make top-quality gear... not supergear, just at the high end of the reality scale.
Any open-ended virtual economy that does not provide for the decay and loss of items will always overflow. This is also related to uncontrolled cash inflation, since a society of millionaires has no incentive to try and sell off their collections of expensive crap if they don't have to pay taxes on them. Insufficient item decay equals powerful item inflation equals player power inflation, and you eventually have a situation where most of your content becomes a joke, as your entire playerbase is outfitted in top of the line stuff handed down by hoarding patrons. Naturally, they'll still hoard the stuff they don't even use, taxing your server and your patience.
The sort of item decay people think (and whine) about most is the decay of weapons, armor, and other battle gear. Realism provides us with yet another good reference. The day after a battle, a soldier who had survived more or less in one piece was spending most of the next day fixing his stuff. Battles are hard on equipment. It only stands to reason that armor and weapons have limited lifespans, and you can only grind down a sword blade (the only way to keep its edge) so many times before you have a piece of wire with a handle. Weapons with wooden handles are cheap, but they get snapped more frequently than all-metal ones, and the best way to keep your spear functional is to sharpen the head again (if there's enough metal there) and fit it onto a new shaft. This, of course, requires a crafting model robust enough to allow for multiple components (get the shaft from a woodworker and a spearhead from the smith).
Shields are a special case. Shields are always mishandled in fantasy RPG's, unless you happen to playing GURPS with every little impossible to find variant rule in the book. Shields were considered disposable items. A typical shield was made primarily of layered wood, edged with metal to absorb chops to its sides, and maybe reinforced with bands, though this made them cumbersome. The proper use of a shield was as an angled deflector to shove kinetic energy to the side, or (if you were feeling lucky) you might try to catch an incoming swing on the metal bands to catch or break an enemy's weapon. Regardless, you can only punish a shield for so long, and they were generally discarded after one battle. The all-metal shield model so popular in fantasy imagery would be too damn heavy to lug around on the field, let alone carried on a mountain trek. A buckler might be made primarily of metal, but bucklers are exceptionally small and require great skill to use effectively, and still aren't indestructible.
In any case, it is to the advantage of the game world to allow for
the destruction and loss of anything. Items can be assigned
hit points and similar ratings, and (if your engine really rocks) variable
damage types. A fireball might recrystalize a piece of steel, but
say goodbye to that apron. Things may be repairable to a degree,
but every time you patch something up, you weaken it. Eventually,
you need to outfit yourself again, discarding your ruined gear, and helping
the economy along in the process.