Fixing economic issues in GMUD - part 2 (Taxes and tolls other fees)

[Redrum]

well since many of the aspects of wow's economy are studied in college economy classes, I figured that it would be a decent system to follow, but since you have no input other than to correct spelling and grammar, i will bow to your obviously superior economic ideas.

sincerely

Someone who is trying to help, and not being a flaming ass.

[Greater]

well since many of the aspects of wow's economy are studied in college economy classes, I figured that it would be a decent system to follow, but since you have no input other than to correct spelling and grammar, i will bow to your obviously superior economic ideas.

sincerely

Someone who is trying to help, and not being a flaming ass.

PM me your address. I'll mail you a box of tissues.

[Greater]

And now for something more entertaining:

http://radio.com/2014/04/16/wu-tang-clan-affiliated-rapper-cuts-off-penis-attempts-suicide/

[Jumpin Jack Flash]

well since many of the aspects of wow's economy are studied in college economy classes, I figured that it would be a decent system to follow

This is all we need.  If we implement a WoW-type economic system in GMud, how long do you think it will be before the Chinese start setting up mining colonies?  The most productive mining areas would be out near the Lost City, meaning LC Bank would be handling the major currency exchanges which would put the Banks of Silvermere, Khaz and Rhud into an economic tailspin, requiring taxpayer bailouts.  And, as we've seen earlier in this post, nobody pays the Silvermere gate tax, so those banks would eventually become insolvent.  Mayor Godfrey would be forced to resort to Mortgage-backed Securities, selling the deeds to the ganghouses to foreign investors (again, the Chinese) and the entire economy of the game would depend upon the Chinese gold miners.  Is this really what you want for the future of GMud?  Huh, is it???

[Jumpin Jack Flash]

On a more serious note though, the economic system is fine at initial start-up.  It takes quite awhile for a new character to collect enough money to purchase halfway decent armor and weapons.  It's the top-end of the game where money becomes a joke, and pretty much useless.

I used to play a game called Wizard's Crown.  Old-school 8-bit graphics, but still fun.  The game was designed so you could trade money for attribute upgrades or purchase weapon improvements.  It took forever to save up enough money to finally get your weapons maxed out, and by the time this happened, you were ready for the final battle.  I know Mud doesn't really have a "final battle" other than 5th quest, but it continues on after that.  Anyways, maybe implementing some type of "enhanceable" weapon for 5th quest, or armor type that could be upgraded, ie., having Martok and the gnome enchantress add +MR into your adamantite platemail tunic for 5 runic and some spell components, or add a heal spell into your weapon for 100 runic, etc.  I have no programming experience, but I'm sure this is all possible with the talents and skills in this mud community.  Anyways, this would at least give you something to do with all that runic in the bank.  Thoughts?

[Stalkerr]

You guys are gonna need a lot more dupes before a complex economic system would really be a possibility.

[interchange]

How about mudops have an auction for a rare non-lim item every few days. E.G. plat plate boots, black velvet gloves, etc.?

[Jumpin Jack Flash]

How about mudops have an auction for a rare non-lim item every few days. E.G. plat plate boots, black velvet gloves, etc.?

This!

[The Crazy Animal]

There is a thread on here somewhere about auction houses already the idea was to have them be an automated as a special type of shop for the most part though ops could list items for sale they wouldn't be the ones in charge of setting it up or running the auction system. Mud-ops already deal with enough issues just from players I'd rather not create more problems for them if I can. If I could set up an in game simulated justice system that is player based I would. Things like who stole my deathpile or inactive players weapons could be part of an economic fix. I've seen parts of these done in other gaming systems. If you look at some of the fish tank games they have feed timers to deal with inactivity. I.e. you have to pay gold for an inactivity timer if you do your exempt for a period from the auto inactivity system. I.e vacation time away from the game. If you don't log in your limited items can be stripped away and automatically added to the auction houses inventory of items to be sold. This creates a little bit of a buffer for mud-ops to since they would only have to deal with game errors in this particular scope then too. As far as using commonality of items in auctions as auto-placed items in auction houses I'll cover this a few paragraphs down.

As for the tolls I'm talking about future of gmud post mmud emulator. There would be new walled cities and new reasons for paying tolls and not paying tolls. Fixing the free way in and out of the towns would be easy simply by adding in a thieves or assassins guild that actually has guild fees. Players not in the guilds could still fight their way through the special semi-free exits if they are big enough to do so it would have it's own risk vs reward set then. Due to this being a data driven game we could even vary the difficulty of the fight your way through based on how many players use this way to cheat the tolls. This takes a data logging system to make it function which brings me to my next paragraph.

I'd really like area of control zones set up that have slow cash regen that can be maxed or drained by player interaction. If the cash resources of the area get drained they stop dropping or dynamically reduce dropping until the resources for the drops replenish. I have some back end tools designed to track this already they are in the wait list to be coded. Even if they end up just being data monitors they can help a realm designer track drop amounts and effects of cash in the game.  One of the big problems we might have to tackle is that I think to have a good solid game start to game end fix is that we might need to simulate an economy with NPC AI agents (independents and groups) to make up for small player groups. I'd like them to interact with the realm just like players would by moving resources from control zone to control zone. Once there are control zones and data loggers in to track things like need for guards or need resources these data switches can control in game events. This creates two new economic models for pvp and pve game realms with some over lap that are based on player interaction. I.e you could stack a control zone via quests, leaving donations, and a few other methods to mess with other players game experiences from the pve side. On the pvp side you can use those pve gained advantages in pvp by laying in wait to ambush your enemy. 

I don't have an issue with gold mining wow style or cash for gold or gold for cash type of systems as any cut from that could go for paying coders or realm designers for their time. A system like that though it does have some back end issues that would be needed before opening it up first. I.e. Making the game open for game engine plugins. In where the main engine is stable and the addons can be added or subtracted with out hurting the stability of the main game engine.

As far as using commonality of non-limited items to base stock auctions I like the idea. However I would like to see the idea developed more. Such as a control zone can have levels based on player interaction the level of a control zone decides on what items and at what rates those common, uncommon, rare, epic rare, and other such grouping come into the game. The effect of this is not to spoil the initial or the long run game but slow it down to what would appear to the player as a natural progression. This could be tied into things like material amounts for each item, such as to have black velvet regen in an auction you have to have a certain amount of black velvet available first before the game spawns them same goes for plat for plat boots. If we could jump the hurdle of coin based economy to a material based economic model I think it would be a good thing for the realm.

We'd love to be able to use data from the auction houses (some of the first post on this type idea were seen to be very acceptable) to vary things in the actual game realm as well. As it was discussed before it would be a great quest for thieves or other similar classes to be able to break into and rob an auction house where as their defenses are varied by the business data numbers that they do.  I.e the more profit they make the harder it becomes and the better the reward so it grows with the player base and the risk to the players putting in their collected items fluctuates based on the in game interaction if they pick the right auction house based on profit point.. The mean average risk should still keep true with what I call the hack and slash average of scripting normality as much as I'd like to make the game hand playable from 1 to 100 levels. Which action houses are better to list your items float from game to game it still holds true to the same system easy control mmud type of interface just localities would differ from game respawn to respawn based on player interaction.

I'd like to find a even medium where safe scripting and hand playing are on equal par. As Win8 has been rolling out and our older scripting platforms do not run anymore we have an opportunity to do this too. If we move to a gold pay in method of scripting you could buy in for a map of an area for a time period and earn a reward with some risk. As I proposed a in game justice system earlier in the post the two ideas can work in tangent for a pvp type of realm an in game frame work would be great as you could post rewards for other players to get back your stuff. In pve only realms this could be covered via npcs. In the overview of the server side system though is that you would buy in time and even if you were offline your character would run as an AI npc mobile object until you log in and choose to emulate (watch) or play. If you die while running it could notify you via email or text msg to tell you there is a problem. Your actions would still effect the game and other players could still interact with you. You could set stuff like invite lists and deposit lists, and where to sell goods that you find. I know it sounds a little complex but it could be built to function perfectly with the data side of the game so it doesn't get lost like mega does and even if you lose your internet connection it wouldn't matter. We could run something like a gold per day map tax or any number of other pay in costs. I can think of lots of ideas based on this that create fun player created custom content that the game can memorize for later use that would make the game fun to read even if your just watching your character run server side. I.e something like a player walking through might read something like a 30% chance of die zombie die based on user interaction. Things like in-game monster death response texts could control this based on player interaction so even after a reset you can leave a mark on the individual server instance of the game. Profanity filters could come later and be rated game instance to game instance based on player votes. Vote per gold even express you ideal in game by what you want to be remembered for your character... Ask me about legendary weapons in another post though...

[Deydrania]

All you'd need to do in order to stop wealth hoarding is link together all banks and set a 90 runic limit.  Thus, all players would be limited to only having 90 runic in the one and only bank.

And for those that have gang houses- they'd have to actively replenish the bank account.

But all of this is moot.  When a board matures, money is everywhere.  Scripting spots will always fill with money.  You'll see 500 runic in every room of a high level scripting spot.   There's no system that could compensate for this. 

If you impose a very high tax on players of 20 runic a day, what would happen to those who didn't want to constantly haul in silver or gold every single day?   Would the penalty for not paying said taxes stop people from being able to play the game?  If you make the penalty too light, players will simply ignore it and rich people would continue to be rich.  If you make it too heavy, then only the rich people would be able to continue playing. 

If you don't want to have 50,000 runic in your bank account then don't put 50,000 runic in your bank account.  Money will always be an issue at high levels since we have nothing to spend it on.  But having nothing on which to spend it isn't a reason to force taxes and fees and penalties because then you force every player to constantly run scripts to haul coins all day just to keep playing the game.