Telepath said:vjek said:disposalist said: ... Of course it involves a bit of suspension of disbelief, with the 'sales tax' being applied 'magically' at point of sale, but if it can provide a good level of control on an economy that would normally go wild: worth it?A way to do that would be to have an NPC provide a 'fuel' (or similar) in trade for some resource that can't be traded, and that 'fuel' (or similar) is required by everyone, without exception, to turn everything that is an output from any wealth-generating loop into an input for any other loop.
Taxes/Fuel whatever you want to call them are not an adequate gold sink. Here is an example. If You find some boots on an orc and want to sell them to a vendor for 10 gold, but first you have to pay another NPC 1 gold to clean them, then why not just have them be worth 9 gold in the first place and skip the negative feeling of a tax? Taxes are ineffective because they only reduce the total amount of gold entering the system by a percentage. Gold sinks need to remove it almost entirely at a rate that keeps up with the amount being generated. Players need to save up for 2 months to dump all their gold on their first horse. What is more fun? The achievement of getting your first horse after so much hard work (a 100% money sink), or being taxed every time you vendor some items (10% money sink). The idea is that money sinks need to add up to 100% or be periodic milestones of 100% or there will be inflation.
I'm certainly no expert, but I believe the key is, taxes can occur on the 'same cash' multiple times, though, and occur often.
When someone trades a magic sword for 10000 coins, that's say 1000 coins in tax/fees 'removed' from the economy in tax. That 1000 coins might have taken weeks for a player to 'create', but took just one sale to remove.
There should be transactions - many of them high value - via auction happening regularly, each with a percentage. It's the regularity of tax being applied that's more important, not just the percentage, so you have to put it on the most regular actions.
I do think there should be other sinks like you suggest, though, yeah. Things like 'sacrifice' of items for buffs. Deconstruction of items for crafting materials. Fast travel component costs. But you would probably find, like in real life, taxes really add up and are a predictable and reliable way for the system itself to sink money.
Telepath said: ... Taxes/Fuel whatever you want to call them are not an adequate gold sink. Here is an example. If You find some boots on an orc and want to sell them to a vendor for 10 gold, but first you have to pay another NPC 1 gold to clean them, then why not just have them be worth 9 gold in the first place and skip the negative feeling of a tax? Taxes are ineffective because they only reduce the total amount of gold entering the system by a percentage. Gold sinks need to remove it almost entirely at a rate that keeps up with the amount being generated. Players need to save up for 2 months to dump all their gold on their first horse. What is more fun? The achievement of getting your first horse after so much hard work (a 100% money sink), or being taxed every time you vendor some items (10% money sink). The idea is that money sinks need to add up to 100% or be periodic milestones of 100% or there will be inflation.
IMO:
In your example, you're correct, using that technique would not be an effective single unavoidable resource/money/coin/currency sink.
Instead, consider a potential implementation where the following is true, among many other features:
- gold doesn't drop from creatures, it isn't produced from the adventure loop, at all, in any way
- you can't trade gold
- you can't sell any items for gold, and you can't trade gold
- you can't buy any items for gold, and you can't trade gold
- to 'clean' an item, the 'cost' to do so would be an untradeable currency, and it would consume as much of that currency as necessary to meet the design goal of no inflation.
Overall, the challenge with discussions like this are that as soon as you start defining implementation features, you limit the possible options, and the tendency (appropriately) is to criticize rather than contribute, because the solution isn't holistic. Adding one or 5 implementation features in isolation is not a holistic solution to the problem. Designing it from scratch is.
Start with the design goals, then gather ideas that objectively meet those goals, then iterate on the implementation details that are thematically consistent and fun, if those are design goals too. :)
vjek said:IMO:
In your example, you're correct, using that technique would not be an effective single unavoidable resource/money/coin/currency sink.
Instead, consider a potential implementation where the following is true, among many other features:- gold doesn't drop from creatures, it isn't produced from the adventure loop, at all, in any way
- you can't trade gold
- you can't sell any items for gold, and you can't trade gold
- you can't buy any items for gold, and you can't trade gold
- to 'clean' an item, the 'cost' to do so would be an untradeable currency, and it would consume as much of that currency as necessary to meet the design goal of no inflation.
In this example you have indeed eliminated inflation because it effectively removes gold from the game, and there can not be a player-to-player market using a common currency. This is a lot like diablo 3 where players have a currency they can spend on repairs and upgrades, but the money is effectively useless. There is no market between players. That kind of economy design turns an MMO into a single player game where other players are nearby playing their single player game next to you. I think we all want a much more interconnected system than that.
Overall, the challenge with discussions like this are that as soon as you start defining implementation features, you limit the possible options, and the tendency (appropriately) is to criticize rather than contribute, because the solution isn't holistic. Adding one or 5 implementation features in isolation is not a holistic solution to the problem. Designing it from scratch is.
Start with the design goals, then gather ideas that objectively meet those goals, then iterate on the implementation details that are thematically consistent and fun, if those are design goals too. :)
I agree with this completely. The reason we know designing an economy is hard is that nobody, no government, no game in all of history has done it right yet.
Just create a taxation equation and tweak it from time to time. Rule like a monarch and anyone that's caught complaining can have their head chopped off. This isn't an accountant simulator, it's an adventure and game for groups to gather and have fun together. To focus on how to become cash and resources rich is to loose before loggin in. Yes an economy is good for trade and crafting but allow it to be changed and dynamic, not some hard set of rules that allows commerce games. Basic should be the focus of the economy, any crazy complexity with just cause headaches and anger. And if one group is going to be angry, make it the money hoarders.
Telepath said: ...In this example you have indeed eliminated inflation because it effectively removes gold from the game, and there can not be a player-to-player market using a common currency. This is a lot like diablo 3 where players have a currency they can spend on repairs and upgrades, but the money is effectively useless. There is no market between players. That kind of economy design turns an MMO into a single player game where other players are nearby playing their single player game next to you. I think we all want a much more interconnected system than that.
IMO:
We're getting close to jumping down the rabbit hole of design, but I think it's important to note that in what was collaborated on back in 2019 it permitted player-to-player trading of everything that wasn't currency or 'fuel' (or similar). So that means all 'unclean' objects (including gear, weapon, armor, etc), all consumables, harvested raws, everything that was an output from all loops (that didn't come from an NPC as an untradeable reward).
Everything that can be donated, sacrificed, or otherwise consumed to produce social currency, or any untradeable currency, all of those objects can be traded between players, freely and directly. That's generally all the objects in game minus 1 (fuel) + 1 category (NPC rewards). Or put another way, the vast majority of objects are tradeable.
Again, in what was collaborated on back in 2019, the second example of an NPC interaction was the donation/sacrifice/contribution mechanic, which achieved the design goal of a positive emergent player behavior, among other goals. In short, the implementation met the design goals of being fun, thematically consistent, and increasing subscriber retention. It was entirely up to the player who they contributed to, and all the player actions improved the value of that respective character in the game world, and to NPC and PC organizations overall.
To bring the conversation back a little closer to reality, there's been no indication any system like this or anything remotely similar that would actually address inflation, will be used in Pantheon.
Every information source to date either does not deny or confirms through demonstration at least two things:
(1) coin currency will be directly tradeable between players, and
(2) coin currency (and/or items that can be sold to NPCs for tradeable coin currency without any additional steps) will be produced directly, as an output, from (at least) the adventure loop.
As long as (at least) those two things are true, RMT, Gold Farming, Gold Sellers and Gold Buyers will exist in the game, as every previous MMO that has those two features has repeatedly proven, historically, since 1995.
Consequently, as there's certainly some value in discussion, and I'm happy to participate in such discussion, objectively, in over 8 years, no specific economic details nor specific public design goals nor specific implementation features regarding Pantheon's economic design have been released other than those that have no impact on curbing inflation and/or unfortunately directly enable inflation. It would be really nice to hear from their Economist on this subject.
vjek said:As long as (at least) those two things are true, RMT, Gold Farming, Gold Sellers and Gold Buyers will exist in the game, as every previous MMO that has those two features has repeatedly proven, historically, since 1995.
I think we should be a little careful here. These things don't cause inflation. No reasonable dev team is ever going to tell you that you are not allowed to spend your subscription time farming gold instead of leveling up. Play the way you want to play. Also, while I don't like RMT, or Buying/Selling/Trading in-game items for real-life ones there have been plenty of times where this has been allowed in various games with no problem in itself. The issue with these is only that they make it easier for cheaters to get real world value out of their cheating. Even so, subscription models are also a reasonable deterrent to Gold Sellers for two main reasons; one- because of the risk of losing money if they have to earn more money per month than they spend on the subscription, and two- because they have to give financial information and their real-life identity to play, so you can ban a person rather than an anonymous account.
I have mentioned this before, but the main cause of inflation in nearly every game that has suffered from it during the time period you suggest has been Hacking, Duping, and Exploiting. From Ultima Online to New World, every one of them over the years have allowed their games to be ruined because they didn't take game security seriously; not testing changes before making them live, giving game control to the client rather than the host, banning players that come forward with exploits rather than rewarding them, making exploits less likely to be reported or fixed... just so many bad choices that left their games vulnerable. Bottom like is that if you want to prevent inflation the #1 way is to harden your game against everything from client side code manipulation to DDOS attacks, and to put every single change into a PTR first for extensive testing before releasing it to live servers.
vjek said: ...
(1) coin currency will be directly tradeable between players, and
(2) coin currency (and/or items that can be sold to NPCs for tradeable coin currency without any additional steps) will be produced directly, as an output, from (at least) the adventure loop.
As long as (at least) those two things are true, RMT, Gold Farming, Gold Sellers and Gold Buyers will exist in the game, as every previous MMO that has those two features has repeatedly proven, historically, since 1995.
Telepath said:I think we should be a little careful here. These things don't cause inflation. ...
IMO:
So, those are the two features (things), I was referring to, the potential coin currency features.
In your opinion, Telepath, in what ways do those two potential coin currency features not cause inflation?
Or did you mean the historical realities of those two potential coin currency features (RMT, Gold Farming, Gold Sellers and Gold Buyers) don't cause inflation, despite being a direct consequence of those two coin currency features?
Also, personally, I've never considered cheating or hacking as a primary cause of inflation in any discussion of an artificial economy theorycrafting exercise, because companies fix those issues (or should).
Simply the passage of time and players playing the game the way it's implemented and intended is enough to create inflation, setting aside any consideration of hacking or cheating in the context discussion or scope.
With just that, the generation of ~infinite tradeable coin currency, typically being dropped direclty from vanquished enemies in the adventure loop, over time, creates guaranteed inflation, as demonstrated by history.
vjek said:In your opinion, Telepath, in what ways do those two potential coin currency features not cause inflation?
Or did you mean the historical realities of those two potential coin currency features (RMT, Gold Farming, Gold Sellers and Gold Buyers) don't cause inflation, despite being a direct consequence of those two coin currency features?
Yea I was specifically referring to players buying gold from other players for real money. Sure, if there is no tradeable currency then there is nothing to sell... but selling it doesn't cause inflation because it already exists in-game. They just move it around from player to player.
Also, personally, I've never considered cheating or hacking as a primary cause of inflation in any discussion of an artificial economy theorycrafting exercise, because companies fix those issues (or should).
Simply the passage of time and players playing the game the way it's implemented and intended is enough to create inflation, setting aside any consideration of hacking or cheating in the context discussion or scope.
With just that, the generation of ~infinite tradeable coin currency, typically being dropped direclty from vanquished enemies in the adventure loop, over time, creates guaranteed inflation, as demonstrated by history.
It is hard to separate this because I can't count on one hand the number of games with player-to-player economies that have not had massive amounts of in-game currency flood the market due to cheating.
You are still correct, if you eliminate those two rules and either get rid of the player-to-player economy, or restrict it to only barter with no common currency you can eliminate inflation. But like you said, it seems like neither is off the table in Pantheon.
However, if you want a game with a vibrant economy then there needs to be a common currency, and in that case the answer to inflation can only be adding adequate money sinks.
If money -then- money sinks -otherwise- inflation.
I feel like we are agreeing here.
Where it seems like we differ is that I believe having a player-to-player economy is worth dealing with controlling inflation, while it sounds like you would prefer to not having a player-to-player economy in the first place.
Telepath said:It is hard to separate this because I can't count on one hand the number of games with player-to-player economies that have not had massive amounts of in-game currency flood the market due to cheating.
Interestingly I just recently watched a video all about this. I hadn't heard about him before, but apparently this guy Manfred has been the main Gold seller for almost every MMO for the past 20 years or so. His entire career has been due to cheating in games to dupe in game currency in order to control the market for selling in game money for all these games. He's finally come out and admitted what he has been doing and is now exposing all the hacks and vulnerablities he's exploited over the years so that these games can try and fix the problems.
If you want to check it out here is the video I saw about it: https://youtu.be/WhKfnVcVHSk (Length 16:21).
While Manfred himself may have repented his ways and is trying to help stop future hacks, this does not mean there are not other Hackers out there who will take up the Torch and try and duplicate his sucess at cheating the system for financial glory.
Telepath said: ...I feel like we are agreeing here.
Where it seems like we differ is that I believe having a player-to-player economy is worth dealing with controlling inflation, while it sounds like you would prefer to not having a player-to-player economy in the first place.
IMO:
Yep, in principle there is agreement. I definitely want a player-to-player economy, however, and I believe both goals are achievable. In the 2019 theorycrafting exercise, direct player to player trading is designed as part of the solution, strongly encouraged, and required.
The only thing that's required vs. a tradeable currency economy is that both prior to and after, the single unavoidable sink is required. That's it.
You can design the solution to have infinite player trading before the single unavoidable sink.
You can design the solution to have infinite player trading after the single unavoidable sink.
You just can't avoid the sink as part of the design. As long as that's the case, direct player to player trading would be, I believe, constant, fun, and thematically consistent.
Put another way, you can logically have a player-to-player economy without inflation, and/or without controlling inflation via multiple sinks. Only one is required, in my opinion, via one potential/possible logical flow/design.
EDIT: Was having this discussion with another group today, and produced this to guide the conversation:
https://postimg.cc/v1DdWQhd .
It offers a one page explanation of some of the tap/sink flow of such a design or system.
Additionally,
The one NPC interaction can adjust all database/object flags and stats of the item(s). The simplest state change makes it usable. Optional implementations can make it tradable, enchantable, enchanted, or increase its quality or tier, all with personalized, increasing or variable costs.
The state change features could vary based on reputation, faction, level, tier, deity, faith, and similar. What NPCs perform which state changes for whom could vary drastically, but the basics of "make it equippable" should be commonly available.
It may be desirable to have the state change be a one-time and/or one-way action, or not, depending on thematic context.
Some state changes could be accomplished by PC Crafters as well, for less "cost", if it's a design goal that their services be desired.