Scripters: How much money do you take in...

[The Crazy Animal]

I'm looking for scripted players that pick up all of their cash rewards. In so much as you go to the bank max heavy at some point in your scripting. I'd really like to know how much money you are banking to better balance the economy of the realm. I know that this is a hard question for some to answer but I'm looking for basic info per 24/hr stance.

How much did you bank in coin?
How much did you sell via items?
What level are you?
What is your class?
What is your race?
What area are you in?
Captures of character point sheets welcome but not needed.

This is simply data collection to improve the realm latter on... So don't hold back.

[PTERY]

I don't think many people pick up cash past level 30-40 and certainly not at the higher levels. There's just no use for it. I'm not trying to dodge your questions...I just think the economics are so skewed that the entire system needs to be revamped. I'd suggest is the following:

-Training should be more expensive
-Resale should net you a fraction of the retail price. Think pawn shop prices, maybe 5 cents on the dollar.
-You should be able to sell everything, even if it's for small sums
-There should be some items that are only available via purchase and only for extremely high prices (100s or even 1000s of runics). These could be items that are in the dats but aren't currently in the game. It would be cool to be able craft custom items too.
-If money was useful again it would be interesting if there was an automated wagering system in the areans, i.e. 2 players pony up 10 runic apiece and winner takes all. Or maybe free-for-all battles where the top finishers are paid out.

[Gardner Denver]

With the diamond mine bug still going strong money is a non issue in either realm.

[The Crazy Animal]

I don't think many people pick up cash past level 30-40 and certainly not at the higher levels. There's just no use for it. I'm not trying to dodge your questions...I just think the economics are so skewed that the entire system needs to be revamped. I'd suggest is the following:

-Training should be more expensive
-Resale should net you a fraction of the retail price. Think pawn shop prices, maybe 5 cents on the dollar.
-You should be able to sell everything, even if it's for small sums
-There should be some items that are only available via purchase and only for extremely high prices (100s or even 1000s of runics). These could be items that are in the dats but aren't currently in the game. It would be cool to be able craft custom items too.
-If money was useful again it would be interesting if there was an automated wagering system in the areans, i.e. 2 players pony up 10 runic apiece and winner takes all. Or maybe free-for-all battles where the top finishers are paid out.

All fair ideas but I still need data from when people do pick up money to the point where they don't. As that will give me a good gist of the exponential rate of growth that precedes the game economy crash. I understand currently the reasons behind the crash and its roots in there being a lack of things to spend money on to remove it from the game.  It's a big topic but it needs to be started somewhere. once this quantifiable data is collected it then needs to be looked at against player spending habits ie cost of gear, spells, leveling... Fixing it with out data is kind of like approaching the problem blindly and poking about hoping that you land on a solution that works. It's much less efficient.

[Zetetic]

Between levels 20-25 I frequently set up in Dark-elf city with two other characters, scripting there for cash. Usual net is about 1-1.3r per hour. You'll often pickup 2-3 adamantite spears in that time that can increase it by about 8p/hr (on Greatermud, they do of course sell for more).

My biggest suggestion to help with the economy is to vastly increase the price of all metal armour, especially plate. I envision Warrior classes ending up bankrupting themselves to go and get their death pile, simply from buying plate armour in the store. There is a discussion about that aspect in another topic on here.

[PTERY]

My biggest suggestion to help with the economy is to vastly increase the price of all metal armour, especially plate. I envision Warrior classes ending up bankrupting themselves to go and get their death pile, simply from buying plate armour in the store. There is a discussion about that aspect in another topic on here.

Not to push this off-topic but a quick fix might be eliminating cash drops altogether. Assuming the diamond mine bug is fixed of course. There are enough material drops at almost all levels that I think players could still get by with no further modifications. The start of the game would be much more difficult though, especially for plate classes.

[kalus]

Do you have a test realm? I'd be happy to help work out a methodology to gain some accurate numbers and help test it.

[schwagg]

With the diamond mine bug still going strong money is a non issue in either realm.

Even without this bug, the Diamond Mines are still obviously intended to be harvested for cash at high levels. I hope this is kept in mind and that we address the greater problem of text block delays in general before screwing with this alone. We need to remember as a community that the content hasn't changed, but simply the manipulation of said content through the engine.

The "Diamond Mine Bug" exists in many places, not just the Diamond Mines. This should be irrelevant to the greater scheme of MMUD economics in the end.

My biggest suggestion to help with the economy is to vastly increase the price of all metal armour, especially plate. I envision Warrior classes ending up bankrupting themselves to go and get their death pile, simply from buying plate armour in the store. There is a discussion about that aspect in another topic on here.

I agree with some increases in values of items, which would in turn increase their prices in shops. The engine should be fixing a lot of the balance problems of plate vs others (and one could certainly argue that it already has), so punishing plate classes further by targeting them for massive price increases seems pretty lame to me, and won't balance anything as much as steer people away from them. It isn't a bad idea, but I personally don't think it's balanced.

I don't think many people pick up cash past level 30-40 and certainly not at the higher levels. There's just no use for it. I'm not trying to dodge your questions...I just think the economics are so skewed that the entire system needs to be revamped. I'd suggest is the following:

-Training should be more expensive
-Resale should net you a fraction of the retail price. Think pawn shop prices, maybe 5 cents on the dollar.
-You should be able to sell everything, even if it's for small sums
-There should be some items that are only available via purchase and only for extremely high prices (100s or even 1000s of runics). These could be items that are in the dats but aren't currently in the game. It would be cool to be able craft custom items too.
-If money was useful again it would be interesting if there was an automated wagering system in the areans, i.e. 2 players pony up 10 runic apiece and winner takes all. Or maybe free-for-all battles where the top finishers are paid out.

On reset pushes, people pick up cash far past level 30 and 40. If you intend to play endgame you'll a few thousand runic as I'm sure you know. Chests are the killers for cash. Usually it filters down from a player running NPP Necros and literally harvesting 1000s of chests. The junk from these filters down to the lowest players when they scrounge for cash upon starting in a non-fresh realm. Even later into the push, areas like Orc Barracks or Barren Hills serve as cash dumps. Anyone who needs cash can typically horse it out of these types of areas if they'd rather do this than sell chest gear.

Charm and sell prices aren't really working right at the moment so changing sell prices drastically is, I think, a mistake (at least until charm and buy/sell mechanics are actually working as they were designed in MMUD).

I agree with new content or existing items in dbase for 1000s of runic and I've advocated for these ideas on Gmud for years now. It MUSt be balanced.

I agree money needs to be useful. I think training keys should be available every 10 minutes but 2x as expensive, and the cash drops of all chests/all
monsters/value of all items needs to be rescaled. I did this on one of my mods and it works quite well to keep things interesting on the cash front. Once the engine works properly some of the shops need rescaling as well in terms of markup percentages.

Adding 10 to 20 more ganghouses scaling in cost and value far beyond the White house would also be another nice goal to have for late game and on into new content. Personal vaults is also another notable idea in this vein.

I'm looking for scripted players that pick up all of their cash rewards. In so much as you go to the bank max heavy at some point in your scripting. I'd really like to know how much money you are banking to better balance the economy of the realm. I know that this is a hard question for some to answer but I'm looking for basic info per 24/hr stance.

How much did you bank in coin?
How much did you sell via items?
What level are you?
What is your class?
What is your race?
What area are you in?
Captures of character point sheets welcome but not needed.

This is simply data collection to improve the realm latter on... So don't hold back.

I'll start at the top like I did with Ptery's. Banking is generally only done at convienence rather than out of neccesity. For cash hauling the best way is to pick a nearby shop as a conversion point, then make paths from there to whichever nearby loot you need to haul. In a friendly realm you can simply let the cash lie where it sits, then collect it before cleanup to a single room, and loop/convert it before returning to your script.

When you are in need of money, scripting areas with a combination of actual cash drops as well as sellable item drops is an excellent way to boost your funds. Some areas such as Serpentkin Village, Darkelf City, Black Fortress, Northern Forests are good examples of these area types. Some of these area types boast a few plat to as much as three or four runic in an hour's time depending on your luck. These examples are all easily scriptable with two to three mixed high teens or low twenties characters.

Higher level versions include areas like Tasloi Village, Barren Hills, Crimson Fortress (Which is pretty much a free-for-all cash mine once someone is scripting it heavily).

Once you're level 45-50 you really shouldn't be concerned with cash much at all if you've made a pile. Areas like Storm Fortress are easy scrounging points in an older realm (*****especially for stealth) if you want to stack cash for training. Chests and high cash/item drop mix areas will be your alternatives to stack up enough cash to train 66-75 when the time comes. Once you're 45-50 there really isn't much to spend cash on except for training.

[The Crazy Animal]

Do you have a test realm? I'd be happy to help work out a methodology to gain some accurate numbers and help test it.

Vitoc has a dev realm that he often tests fixes out on that we don't generally give players access to. You would have to check with him for access to it.



I'm sorry I'll have to talk past a number of posts I did read all of them there's just to much to reply to each one individually.

Diamond mine type bugs definitely need to be fixed. If we are ever to have a semi-stable realm economy the entrance of wealth into the game needs to be regulated.

As far as charm goes I really dislike that system as a whole. I'd much rather introduce a method of haggling in where charm plays a part on how likely the shop with accept your offer based on where your offer falls between actual item value and item mark-up percentage. This would be a social skill in the game falling under the stats intelligence, wisdom, and charm. A player could still just sell an item as they use to but they would get the worst deal the shop wants to give. So it just adds in a extra dimension of a money game into the realm.

I agree a lack of new items and spells also plays a part in there being excess money. I'm looking to have that fixed sometime in version 1.5 - 2 in moving away from a stock item base. Not looking to go into that topic yet as I haven't finished typing up notes on the system.

I have a few quick fixes up my sleeve that work around the need to just turn off cash drops. I'm not really looking to use quick fixes though.

I'd agree that more gang houses are needed as well as personal houses. I'm currently working on a personal inn room idea based on some constructs from Tlord.

I like the arena wager idea but the idea is to take money back out of the game not just move it around between players. So it would have to include a percentage house charge to place the wager. ie a portion of money taken in by the arena. The money taken in via wagers by the arena could then be used to generate some interesting thievery mini-missions.



I'd really like to give the realm an economic engine that ties into: shops, mob drops (cash/non-limited items), banks, item cost, realm taxes, housing costs... It would run on rule sets that let the AI of the engine balance out the general economic realm policy.  I've talked with Vitoc, DC, and Gard in brief about it a few times. The rule sets could then be tweaked by a number of parameters and the overall economics of the realm could be viewed on a data logger/visualizer  that I've laid out already in the dev section as ideas in brief. I've been thinking this over for a long while now.

This is the basis of the data logger:
I was just thinking it might help to manage the amount of money coming into the realm if we could generate reports based on game data. Then using this data we could better set prices and shop markups...

Economic Summery:
Total in banks: = X
Total on Ground: = X
Total change from shops = (Sold - Bought) = X
Total change from textblocks = (Given - Taken) X

Player Economic Summery:
Bank accounts across levels: - report formatted as seen below for each level that has a player in it.
Level: X, # of PC: X, Avg: X, Total: X, Min: X, Max: X

The bank accounts across levels should be logged for a month in intervals of a week.

Other Cash Reports:  - these would allow us to key into problem areas.
1. Room Range: Map #, Room # to # - reports single instance of cash in a range of rooms

2. Rooms with most cash top # - reports a top list on the number of rooms with the most cash in them.

3. Shop log - Records how much money each shop has taken in and given out since start of game.
Format should roughly be:
Shop: #, Shop name, Value Sold, Value Bought

4. Textblock log - records how much money a textblock has taken or given out since start of game.
Format should roughly be:
Texblock: #, Value given, Value taken


There are a vast number of underling issues: - this is only some of them...
Items persist - as in they don't degrade and leave the realm nor do they get sold or picked up other then by player interaction
Cash persists - Rooms fill up with cash and nothing picks it up similar to what I said on the line above.
Animal type mobs - should not drop cash.
Sell prices to high and do not follow any model of economic rarity or demand vs supply pricing.
Item shops - Item production does not follow a player base demand model nor resource cost availability model.
Chest rewards - don't follow any economic model for an area's estimated wealth.
Cash drop rewards - don't follow any economic model for an area's estimated wealth
Coinage value - does not follow any economic model to derive it's value from nor is it represented by any model to insure it doesn't over deflate or over inflate in value based on it's infinite instantaneous generation.
Mines - lack of regulation in general.

What all of this means is the current economic model of the game realm has a massive problem of deflation. It's the opposite problems most countries have in the real world.  So if were going to move away from the original posts topic and stick with tossing out ideas you should familiarize yourself with the type of system that is needed to fix the problem. Medievia is a mud game that faced the same deflationary economic problem and fixed it:
http://www.medievia.com/medwww/help/goldtax.html
http://www.medievia.com/medwww/help/ECONOMY.html
http://www.medievia.com/medwww/help/TRADE.html
http://www.medievia.com/medwww/help/TRADEPOST.html
http://www.medievia.com/medwww/help/CATASTROPHE.html

I'm not looking to copy their system but I do like the player interactivity with the economy and the creative solutions they have come up with to guide their economy into a stable system. Every way there is to make money in the game must be balanced with ways to take it out of the game. So take a look at what they did and then lets come up with some ideas. Which we can then work on further in the game idea section.

[Silvix]

I personally don't collect cash until i need it for something. I.E. re-gearing, helping out a low level, ect. What I often do is run around grabbing stuff on the ground to sell for cash. I never let my script pick it because for one, it weighs you down taking you out of your normal enc range and 2 it takes time away from your script to go deposit it. It's just not worth it, imo, to collect cash while scripting.


On a side note, when i do this method and sell things i normally range from 50 - 100 runics per trip. Great dragon rooms are great for this sort of thing.

[schwagg]

Vitoc has a dev realm that he often tests fixes out on that we don't generally give players access to. You would have to check with him for access to it.



I'm sorry I'll have to talk past a number of posts I did read all of them there's just to much to reply to each one individually.

Diamond mine type bugs definitely need to be fixed. If we are ever to have a semi-stable realm economy the entrance of wealth into the game needs to be regulated.

As far as charm goes I really dislike that system as a whole. I'd much rather introduce a method of haggling in where charm plays a part on how likely the shop with accept your offer based on where your offer falls between actual item value and item mark-up percentage. This would be a social skill in the game falling under the stats intelligence, wisdom, and charm. A player could still just sell an item as they use to but they would get the worst deal the shop wants to give. So it just adds in a extra dimension of a money game into the realm.

I agree a lack of new items and spells also plays a part in there being excess money. I'm looking to have that fixed sometime in version 1.5 - 2 in moving away from a stock item base. Not looking to go into that topic yet as I haven't finished typing up notes on the system.

I have a few quick fixes up my sleeve that work around the need to just turn off cash drops. I'm not really looking to use quick fixes though.

I'd agree that more gang houses are needed as well as personal houses. I'm currently working on a personal inn room idea based on some constructs from Tlord.

I like the arena wager idea but the idea is to take money back out of the game not just move it around between players. So it would have to include a percentage house charge to place the wager. ie a portion of money taken in by the arena. The money taken in via wagers by the arena could then be used to generate some interesting thievery mini-missions.



I'd really like to give the realm an economic engine that ties into: shops, mob drops (cash/non-limited items), banks, item cost, realm taxes, housing costs... It would run on rule sets that let the AI of the engine balance out the general economic realm policy.  I've talked with Vitoc, DC, and Gard in brief about it a few times. The rule sets could then be tweaked by a number of parameters and the overall economics of the realm could be viewed on a data logger/visualizer  that I've laid out already in the dev section as ideas in brief. I've been thinking this over for a long while now.

This is the basis of the data logger:
I was just thinking it might help to manage the amount of money coming into the realm if we could generate reports based on game data. Then using this data we could better set prices and shop markups...

Economic Summery:
Total in banks: = X
Total on Ground: = X
Total change from shops = (Sold - Bought) = X
Total change from textblocks = (Given - Taken) X

Player Economic Summery:
Bank accounts across levels: - report formatted as seen below for each level that has a player in it.
Level: X, # of PC: X, Avg: X, Total: X, Min: X, Max: X

The bank accounts across levels should be logged for a month in intervals of a week.

Other Cash Reports:  - these would allow us to key into problem areas.
1. Room Range: Map #, Room # to # - reports single instance of cash in a range of rooms

2. Rooms with most cash top # - reports a top list on the number of rooms with the most cash in them.

3. Shop log - Records how much money each shop has taken in and given out since start of game.
Format should roughly be:
Shop: #, Shop name, Value Sold, Value Bought

4. Textblock log - records how much money a textblock has taken or given out since start of game.
Format should roughly be:
Texblock: #, Value given, Value taken


There are a vast number of underling issues: - this is only some of them...
Items persist - as in they don't degrade and leave the realm nor do they get sold or picked up other then by player interaction
Cash persists - Rooms fill up with cash and nothing picks it up similar to what I said on the line above.
Animal type mobs - should not drop cash.
Sell prices to high and do not follow any model of economic rarity or demand vs supply pricing.
Item shops - Item production does not follow a player base demand model nor resource cost availability model.
Chest rewards - don't follow any economic model for an area's estimated wealth.
Cash drop rewards - don't follow any economic model for an area's estimated wealth
Coinage value - does not follow any economic model to derive it's value from nor is it represented by any model to insure it doesn't over deflate or over inflate in value based on it's infinite instantaneous generation.
Mines - lack of regulation in general.

What all of this means is the current economic model of the game realm has a massive problem of deflation. It's the opposite problems most countries have in the real world.  So if were going to move away from the original posts topic and stick with tossing out ideas you should familiarize yourself with the type of system that is needed to fix the problem. Medievia is a mud game that faced the same deflationary economic problem and fixed it:
http://www.medievia.com/medwww/help/goldtax.html
http://www.medievia.com/medwww/help/ECONOMY.html
http://www.medievia.com/medwww/help/TRADE.html
http://www.medievia.com/medwww/help/TRADEPOST.html
http://www.medievia.com/medwww/help/CATASTROPHE.html

I'm not looking to copy their system but I do like the player interactivity with the economy and the creative solutions they have come up with to guide their economy into a stable system. Every way there is to make money in the game must be balanced with ways to take it out of the game. So take a look at what they did and then lets come up with some ideas. Which we can then work on further in the game idea section.

Seems a little excessive to me. I see all kinds of these vapor posts all over the forums, and in the end turning MMUD into another game doesn't seem very interesting to me either. A day or two's work of work rebalancing cash drops and scaling cash properly from 1-max is really all that's neccesary.

We could all go play Medievia if we wanted a totally controlled economic system. Or WoW or most of the MMOs these days.

[The Crazy Animal]

lol you didn't have to quote the entire thing to disagree with me. I'm not saying we should make the game like medievia only that we should learn from their wisdom and build a system that equates cash drops to cash losses. Right now we exist in a system that is one of infinite cash generation with limited withdraw. So in other words no amount of redistribution or limiting of cash drops can solve the problem until we so afford ourselves a way of a means to withdraw excess wealth from the game. It is not until we see ourselves has cash lacking that we move to correct it by creating means to generate cash. as such it is the imbalance of cash liquidity that it has value onto itself.

I already know the hardcore players will disagree with this methodology as it predominates the lackadaisical virtue in which they enjoy the culture of mmuding in a excess of liquid monetary value as a means to usurp power onto themselves to control the realm as they want to. However it is in the struggling with the monetary fairness of a game that a game does become challenging. MMUDS lack of monetary challenges predominates it's failing and continence as just a hack and slash mud game that dwells among a myriad number of similar games. It is in the fact that there are some mudders that enjoy the fact there is a hack and slash attribute and do play it to that means. Others though understand the game at the level of strategy and do play the game to that point, and still yet there are those who understand the game as a sociologist-political game do take the game to that standard.

In so much yet all players do look at it as a game and if it is to persist as a game it must have a economy that does not crash so quickly economicly. And the crash in this case is the infinite generation of capital without regard to it's removal from the game itself. So while you may think my views are harsh they are actually a way to play the game across a wider spectrum of gaming which are self balancing and controlled and self-sustaining.   

[schwagg]

lol you didn't have to quote the entire thing to disagree with me. I'm not saying we should make the game like medievia only that we should learn from their wisdom and build a system that equates cash drops to cash losses. Right now we exist in a system that is one of infinite cash generation with limited withdraw. So in other words no amount of redistribution or limiting of cash drops can solve the problem until we so afford ourselves a way of a means to withdraw excess wealth from the game. It is not until we see ourselves has cash lacking that we move to correct it by creating means to generate cash. as such it is the imbalance of cash liquidity that it has value onto itself.

I already know the hardcore players will disagree with this methodology as it predominates the lackadaisical virtue in which they enjoy the culture of mmuding in a excess of liquid monetary value as a means to usurp power onto themselves to control the realm as they want to. However it is in the struggling with the monetary fairness of a game that a game does become challenging. MMUDS lack of monetary challenges predominates it's failing and continence as just a hack and slash mud game that dwells among a myriad number of similar games. It is in the fact that there are some mudders that enjoy the fact there is a hack and slash attribute and do play it to that means. Others though understand the game at the level of strategy and do play the game to that point, and still yet there are those who understand the game as a sociologist-political game do take the game to that standard.

In so much yet all players do look at it as a game and if it is to persist as a game it must have a economy that does not crash so quickly economicly. And the crash in this case is the infinite generation of capital without regard to it's removal from the game itself. So while you may think my views are harsh they are actually a way to play the game across a wider spectrum of gaming which are self balancing and controlled and self-sustaining.   

You didn't have to type multiple paragraphs to repeat yourself.

Mud's cash system doesn't need to be balanced the way you think it does. I've balanced mud's cash system in a mod before, and it works extremely well. This is the way cash problems should be addressed before injecting elaborate contraptions like your idea.

You have a problem keeping things simple. It's evident if anyone reads your posts over the last few years.

In this case,  do the opposite of your natural leaning: Keep it simple.

[The Crazy Animal]

lol The idea is simple be cause it works with simple ideas.

The two basic premises for a balanced economic system are:
For every means that you put cash in the game there needs to be one to take it out.
That cash entering the realm must not exceed cash leaving the realm.

A effective measure against over accumulation of capital in a game realm:
Banked cash that is not spent is devalued over a period of time. i.e taxed
Cash that is left on the ground after a player leave a room can be picked up by the game mobs.
Items that are left on the ground after a player leaves a room can by chance be picked up by game mobs.
Items that are left on the ground after a player leaves a room can be devalued over a period of time.

A balance just by adding items and changing prices only treats the symptoms of the problem that it wishes to fix. So yes it works exceedingly well until it crash from its own limitations because its dealing with a system that can produce an endless amount of capital. The game currently doesn't follow any means of a sustainable economic model.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be price changes for other balance issues but that in itself does not fix the problem of a broken economic model.

[strantheman]

I read the extensive post where you lay out the model for the data that would need to be collected and potentially considered in the game logic. I also saw some blunt replies from people who basically don't believe a lot of thought needs to be put into this. Although it may be difficult to get much participation from the players (beta testers) because it is a lot of work -- I agree with you, Animal, that all of the data should be looked at before anything is designed.

If you wanted to wipe all cash on the ground one weekend, and then set it so monsters pickup cash after 1 hour, I think it would be worth testing to see how that affects things. Obviously there are upsides and downsides we could all come up with for something like this being attempted on an 8 month old realm, but quite frankly without a closed system like this it will be impossible for Animal to ever collect the type of data he needs.

Having experience with statistics, systems, and data modeling I have to say knowing the answer to that Economic Summary (or summery Animal :) ) would be very enlightening.

Log the total_in_banks, total_deleted_off_ground, shops_in, shops_out, textblocks_in, textblocks_out. And yeah as Animal probably already considered, you could log total_cash_in_inventories but that is not necessary if you're tracking all of the in and out. We're not interested in who is the wealthiest, we want try to find patterns that can teach us something more in depth about money in MMud.

I don't know if you'd have to setup listeners for each of these events and log them one by one, or if you have existing logs that could be parsed each hour or something, but build data for a month and step back and graph it. Would that sort of test really hurt or injur the realm really? Even if things get out of hand and people are dumping loads of cash to new players, the evidence gathered during this trial would be very valuable.