Money

[kalus]

Money only really means anything at the start of a realm.  Once people have been scripting for a few weeks cash is everywhere and means nothing.  To remedy this a system needs to be put in place to ensure that scripting does not yield a massive income. 

Possible solutions, bosses or unscriptable monsters drop cash.  Monsters that are scripted for high exp rates drop no cash.  Getting money should not be a byproduct of scripting for exp, due to the fact that scripting for exp is done 95%+ of the time, resulting in lots of cash.

Make money a wanted, needed and hard to get commodity.

[Bong]

http://greatermud.com/forums/index.php?topic=71.0

Post branches off to cover a lot about the economics of the mud.

[The Crazy Animal]

Game Economics

That post does cover a lot about economics but I don?t think there is a definite answer on what the realms economics will really look like yet.

Well on with solving the problem: (sorry this is another long post)

A small amount of the problem could probably be cleared up by just making money poof when left on the ground after an amount of time. Also, any intelligent humanoid monster able to take a class or profession should be made to pick up money. What this does is the first thing a spawned or wondering monster of this type does when they get into a player less room is pick up cash. However, in rooms with players they should wait 5 or so game ticks before picking it up. This makes it so the primary attention of monsters is still on the players.

Another small amount of the problem would be fixed if an items quality incrementally decides the amount of time an item can be left on the ground before it vanishes. However, Magical items and items of impeccable quality should never poof when left on the ground. Maybe some wondering NPC cleaner agents could be used with items too but I think that should be kept more to populated areas and main roads.

The final portion of the problem becomes scripting based similarly to what you say. However, no monster is un-scriptable save those that take to many people to kill or are in regions not worth going to. So how do we solve this then?

The biggest thing that is needed is a very strong economic model in the lay out of a realm this mean that areas possessing capital such as villages, towns, forts, mines, castles, encampments, farms, and the areas directly around them are the places that should drop the most money. As you get further away from areas like these, the less money should be dropped. Finally, if its not on a main road it or on a path to a capital retaining area then it shouldn?t drop cash. This has to be followed very strictly too other wise it doesn?t work. There is one problem with this is with encampments and forts; generally, theses should follow the overall principle that the further they are from a stable source of capital the less money should be available in them especially if it is a military encampment or fort.

Now there also is a way of insuring that players cannot monetarily script an area that would be to easy for the characters level and that is to make the game engine aware of a player?s level when it is deciding what is going to be dropped. This means that if there is a player exceeding the targeted level range of an area in the room when a monster is kill it stops the cash/item reward from dropping. The effect of this is such that it enforces the basic principle is a monsters reward should always be balanced with the risk to the player. 

There are a lot of ways to make money scarcer but there must be a fine balance achieved when doing it. This balance or difficulty should not exceed a below average users level patience. Most players today are so dependent on scripting that if you give them the option to do something else they normally will sit in the bank and talk. This is of course unless it is truly worth doing. For example, no one wants to pick apples for a week just to get a enough gold to buy a pair of sandals and a pair of pants. The more tedious and time consuming or repetitive a task is the less people are going to want to do it. If it?s not economical to make money scripting any more we don?t want the entire realm to turn to killing its other users just to make money just a portion of it.

TCA

[Rhinehold]

This idea has a really important message.  Money is always a love hate relationship.  By the time I usually got to the point where I had oddles of money, I had nothing to spend it on.  When I needed the cash to buy the expensive stuff from the vendors, I didn't have it.

I do agree, that after a certain point mobs, or certain mobs, dropping cash is silly.  Non-humanoids shouldn't drop cash.  I also think that major cash should come from bosses.