An Inflation workaround

ArchivedUser

We know that mining will exist in the game so I have a proposal. Have all the nodes start with a limited supply of coinage. As you expand your node you would get a further injection of coinage. Other than that all coins must be minted by mining the proper metals for coin production. It can be tied into the node quest system. Both you and your node would get an Exp bonus for turning in ores to be minted into coins. It would also encourage people to mine metals that are not immediately useful when building a colony like copper, silver, gold and platinum. So some miners would focus on the useful metals like Iron to make tools, weapons and armor and others would focus on copper, gold and silver for coinage and jewellery making.

I think once you node reaches level 3 or 4 you would get no further coinage from home world and have to be self sufficient so either mine it or trade items for it to advance your nodes finances further.

What do you all think?

ArchivedUser

It's an interesting idea, but I think it would hurt people whom need the money the most. People in the less advanced nodes would have a harder time getting income than the already advanced areas which in turn would just make more people migrate there. I used to play an MMORPG called Wakfu where you needed to mint your own coinage. It was a cool idea, but didn't really work well IMO. It doesn't stop inflation but only slows it.

Personally I think the best way to reduce inflation is give an outlet for coinage from the game world such that money isn't constantly produced and never removed. This is most commonly done in two ways: Allow people to buy game time with in-game currency, and allow people the option to buy cosmetics from the cash shop using in-game currency. Both should have very high markups.

ArchivedUser

Interesting broad strokes. Every MMO has mechanics to remove currency from the game. To even entertain this idea we would have to have much more knowledge on the economy. Problems persist when a seemingly small miscalculation allows for currency sellers to exploit and increase inflation. Just as if holding one extra " ;  " effects the whole line of code

ArchivedUser

The problem becomes circulation.

If you get rich players, they only have the need to satisfy one persons maintenance needs. So all their coins sits in the their own savings bank. When you get a fixed amount of coins, and the rich sit on their coinage, less and less money gets circulated. 10,000 players daily needs are far greater than 1 players daily needs.

So you need to force the distribution of wealth as the best method to ensure money always circulates.Otherwise you end up in the situation where the bulk of the population has no money to spend, a few have it locked away and the bank mints no more coins. So the economy dies.

So you print more money, but if its not distributed, the rich that have cornered the economy just make the most money which gets pulled out of circulation into their private savings bank and the economy stagnates again. The bank then mints more coins.....hey presto, hyper inflation.

Best option is to 'force' all savings into economic development (jobs). That way the stagnant wealth gets re-injected into the economy and allows circulation to remain liquid. Players get cash, nodes get taxes, no new coins need minting. Maintenance and decay costs also ensure constant circulation.

ArchivedUser

My original thinking was that maybe they will have everything in this game created from mats that can be gathered in the game itself. This would naturally include the metals for the coinage. If the town you are working in or a citizen of run out of coins to pay for services(tasks and quests) then you need to get some people out to mine more.
   All the other inflation suppression schemes could still be present IG such as introducing gold sinks and taxes to take the wealth out of the hands of hoarders.
I am kind of picturing an EVE ONLINE type system where you either gather all the mats yourself or pay someone else to gather them or do without. I think the fact that you may have to do without would be a great feature to any new MMO .

ArchivedUser

And what happens if the node goes back to level 1? Citizens will have their money removed or held captive until the node levels up again?

ArchivedUser

Something to consider might be the fact that material nodes will be allocated randomly, as well. If they left the printing of coin reliant on these nodes, but one does not happen to spawn in the main Node people are residing in, then a larger problem appears that could lead to an extended period of stagnant trade and economical growth.

They could possibly trade other materials to an outside Node for the coin mats, but then the whole reason for this proposed system is moot anyway since in either case people can trade without the need for coin. Coin just expedites the process slightly by giving a base value to judge worth of different types of items for fair agreements. I could go on, but I've digressed enough for one post.

ArchivedUser

Inflation is only a problem in games because of infinitely repeatable currency generation. Are we even sure that is going to an issue in this game? From everything I've hear it doesn't sound like resources just magically repopulate themselves, and all goods have shelf lives as well. So while we go out and gather/make stuff and generate currency, it'll be dumped into node growth and maintaining what we have already built, as well as in sieges and whatnot, but then too the resources will deplete over time.... and surely that'll reduce inflation.

ArchivedUser

FliP said:

And what happens if the node goes back to level 1? Citizens will have their money removed or held captive until the node levels up again?

The fall back position will always be gold for quest completion as a reward for services to the node. The Bank of PvE in effect....can inject as much or as little as intrepid need or want.

The ideal position is what would be fundamental from starting any economy from scratch. The first thing your node needs is a local/communal bank/mint as a communal IOU system. This acts as both a saving and investment pool for its community members (think genuine local council rather than guild-bank). So you could tie a bank to each and every node where the citizens are the shareholders, employers and workers that exist in a financial bubble of self sufficiency. This suits AoC final stretch goal anyway. That works fine as long as that nodes economics remain an isolated pool maybe even its own currency. It gets tricky when those nodes start trading with import/export of isolated economies across nodes, unless the bank of those two nodes merge. If they merge to remove the import/export management, splitting at a later date can get messy. Economic/political centralisation vs distribution will always be an eternal battle. It is known

Many people have become slaves to economics without realising its not actually a wild-beast blown by the winds of chance, but was invented to allow for scalable social organisation and distributed/specialised trades. Even the global economy is an isolated system. Its incredibly difficult as knowledge increases, for everyone to know everything about anything. People have to specialise and collaborate to streamline the amount of knowledge each individual needs to possess. The more is known, the more society has to fragment and specialise to keep the knowledge base manageable.

This is not much different to the damage/tank/healer concept in its most simple form. Instead of 3 individual with all 3 skills, each becomes powerful in 1/3 and offloads 2/3 of their skills to the others. There could be 90 skills to load as 3 individuals doing their own thing. As specialists, you only need to know 30 of the those skills.

The problem that prevents truly independent and isolated economies to be fully enclosed and circular (improve>construct>maintain/research>destruct>improve), is simply that some essential material are not locally available. So import/export transfers (trade) becomes a requirement. So you have to break out of the enclosed economic barrier to function fully.

For an economy to work properly you must;

a. Decide as a community what roles your citizens will play that are distributed in an optimal way for the community to thrive.

b. Allocate the node bank funds to distribute payment for that labour.

c. Operate in a non-profit way...because you cant take out more money from the system than you put in (not without minting more coin at least).