For humanoid mob types I can't see a logical reason for them not to be carrying around some sort of currency? In life I almost always am carrying some sort of money, you are interrupting the mobs life when you kill it, it may be in the process of going to a market, or a trade center. Why would the Mob not have currency?
If mobs stopped dropping gold/plat whatever currency, where would the currency come from?
Will Pantheon do more control on the supply of gear? Contemporary MMOs constantly have you slotting new gear every single level..and levels come quick..it makes most gear near worthless. It'd be nice if gear supply was such that it wouldn't be odd to find a really nice piece of gear, and end up using that through a bunch of levels.
cram9030 said:I would also like to see a living macro economy. It would be great if I was hunting polar bears and gathering pelts in the arctics and then take a trip down to a Mediterranean sort of city where I could sell them for a worthwhile profit. But if to many people started making the same run the market would get flooded and the profitability would decrease. That way you would have to be ahead of the curve for what the NPC demand would be.
I think we have all experienced the repercussions of rapid inflation within an in game economy. Inflation is something that is inevitable in any in game economy with multiple players because they will all receive some sort of drops but the only way for money to be removed from the economy is via the merchants but as we all know the intra-player based economy will always undercut it. I would really like to see some means to help control the influx of money beyond the supercilious items like buying a house. I imagine some sort of investment system where you can sponsor expeditions that may succeed or fail but the returns fluctuate based off things like in game weather and can be mechanism to tie up money and reduce inflation.
These are just a few of my ideas. What are yours? I also wonder if the devs have started developing the economy along side the lore?
JDNight said:In advance: I appologize. I did not read Vandraad's post before I wrote this one . I now realise that he came to much the same conclusion I did.(only before I did) Anyway, all the more support for the conclusion.
Well, I have an MBA and I focused on ecconomics when I got it. It is my oppinion that keeping the amount of free cash in the game at a set point will not work. The cash has to be at a certain ratio to the value of all of the items that are available to be traded at anytime. If the cash is set at 3,000,000 (for sake of discussion) and the server has matured to the point that there are thousands of powerful items in the game, well then those items will be worth nearly nothing in terms of cash. However, if the level of cash is beyond the value of the items, otherwise known as MUDflation, then the items are what become overvalued. You dont want a situation where players are so starved for cash that newbies can't even buy spells, but you also dont want a situation where standard, low level equipment sells for 10,000PP.
Note that the cash needs to be at a ratio to the 'value of the items to be traded'. Not all items are for sale at any time and items will change in value, depending on server conditions, scarcity, patches (nerfing!), ect... I suspect the best way to handle this is the way we do it in the USofA. You will need someone (GM or dev) to monitor the ecconomy from time to time. Keep track of random items that sell often and see what is happening to their prices. If money needs to be removed... find a way to remove it. If it needs to be added, find a way to add it. This could be tough though if there are many servers.
EDIT: Valuing the items to be traded can be very difficult. The value of an item is dependant on so many things, not the least of which is the availablity of substitutes. Also, if items do not 'wear out', then over time, only the best items will really be worth anything because a character can only equip one breastplate! (this alone will make P:RotF different from EVE)
EDIT: It will actually be more difficult to value items in P:RotF that in EVE, in my oppinion, as each character needs only a limited number of each item and there will be a large variety of 'substitues' out there. Also, the value of an item in EVE often comes down to a numbers game (a battleship is better than a cruiser), whereas in a MMORPG the value can be influenced by the 'look' of the item, whether a particular guild thinks it is the BiC, what 'resist' or stat happens to be the flavor of the month, how many of the right 'class' there are on the server, or if someone saw Aradune running by wielding it.
Terrific points!
I would recommend the following:
1. NPC Caravans and merchant ships that are attackable and defendable by players.
2. The routes they take are more or less secure given the infrastructure upgrades from player activity.
3. This may or may not be a pvp opportunity.
4. Caravans can be modularly destructable, wheels, axels, tarp covering, all destructible from battle and replaceable through the player economy. (gold sink) Even not attacked, rough roads/seas can damage goods.
5. If the caravan runs over rough roads, it wears on the items being transported. These items might need repair when they arrive (gold sink).
6. Players can pay a variable of the total estimated value of their item to have it transported via caravan, let's say 8% for an easy road, 15% for a long hard road. Player caravan guards can be paid a % of a succesful run, player raiders/pirates/theives can get a chance to get some of the items in the caravan. The rest is destroyed. (gold sink)
7. The benefit of caravans (or maybe their necessity) is that you can reach other markets you otherwise couldn't due to the encumbrance/inconvenience of transporting of so many items yourself.
8. Perhaps an insurance system (very exploitable would have to be watched). (gold sink)
Benefit to this system: optional pvp, roleplay, risk/reward, and gold sink.
cram9030 said:One of the economy based things that is necessary IMO is that the economic iterations are part of the lore and geography. We know that in real life a lot of the difficulties are based off of proximity and some basic disagreements come from the economic troubles. It would be great if say you started getting better faction by defending a town on one side of the river and you lost faction with the economic competitor across the river, which then resulted in higher prices when you were in the neighboring town.
I would also like to see a living macro economy. It would be great if I was hunting polar bears and gathering pelts in the arctics and then take a trip down to a Mediterranean sort of city where I could sell them for a worthwhile profit. But if to many people started making the same run the market would get flooded and the profitability would decrease. That way you would have to be ahead of the curve for what the NPC demand would be.
I have a couple of questions about the Pantheon economy.
1) Are the developers planning any sort of dynamic pricing system for trading with NPCs to account for supply/demand and distance, etc? Account for the type of scenarios in this previous post. Put an implicit floor/ceiling on interplayer trading prices. If not, there could be some goofy arbitrage opportunities that make no sense from a lore perspective. Or worse, make some gathering or crafting pointless.
2) Will there be any point to being a crafter? So far, based on previous gaming experience, the answer is always no. Drops are always better. And worse, sometimes I would find a profitable venture only to have the same item given away as a prize at some later date. I really enjoyed the early expansions in EQ when you had to kill spiders and sew your silk armor. But once I would reach level 20ish, that was no longer viable.
Hauskat said:
2) Will there be any point to being a crafter? So far, based on previous gaming experience, the answer is always no. Drops are always better. And worse, sometimes I would find a profitable venture only to have the same item given away as a prize at some later date. I really enjoyed the early expansions in EQ when you had to kill spiders and sew your silk armor. But once I would reach level 20ish, that was no longer viable.
I'm not a dev, but I strongly believe that their intent is for the answer here to be yes. I base this both on things they've already said about the subject in streams, newsletters, and interviews, as well as Ceythos's previous work in Vanguard (Ceythos is the designer doing the crafting system for Pantheon).
There are many, many factors that will determine whether crafting is truly viable, but I expect that VR really is trying to accomplish that goal.