Let's say that a game starts with X amount of gold that is given to players by the typical means: mobs, quests, npcs, etc. But once X reaches 0, those systems temporarily no longer give out gold rewards. The only way to get them to payout again is by cycling the gold through the game's gold sinks: taxes, fees, etc that would feedback into that initial pool of gold.
this would be a great idea, but i see a lot of problems:
that would probably kill the economic or that currency. Because merchants would have most of the money and sell it for real money on ebay.
also what if most of the player would save up money for bedder equipp? than someone have to burn his money or a merchant would be some kind of pawnshop/banking house and gain interest charges.
And if a wealthy player suddenly quits - all of his money is out of the economic circle and you have to replace this - so what to do if they return again after a while?
@MrPockets an alternative is a money supply fixed PER player. like each players gets 100k from quests, and thats it. Traders dont buy anything unless they sell their stuff to players and have gold in reserve.
This too doesnt work because we already know there will be an infinite supply or natural resources like wood, metals, plants, furs etc, so you just end having humongous stockpiles of low and high tier resources that sell for dirt cheap, and it forces players to make alt after alt after alt to grind out quests and cash, which I dont think is the game experience we are looking for.
I dont want to get into the RMT discussion because I feel a game should do everything possible to eliminate it right out. RMT will always go up and down according to the games popularity and state of economy.
@MrPockets an alternative is a money supply fixed PER player. like each players gets 100k from quests, and thats it. Traders dont buy anything unless they sell their stuff to players and have gold in reserve.
This too doesnt work because we already know there will be an infinite supply or natural resources like wood, metals, plants, furs etc, so you just end having humongous stockpiles of low and high tier resources that sell for dirt cheap, and it forces players to make alt after alt after alt to grind out quests and cash, which I dont think is the game experience we are looking for.
I dont want to get into the RMT discussion because I feel a game should do everything possible to eliminate it right out. RMT will always go up and down according to the games popularity and state of economy.
I agree, I'd rather not worry about the RMT in this discussion.
To get back to the main topic. I'm not claiming any of this would actually work, I just think it would be an interesting experiment, or something to think about.
As for more details on what's in my head: If designed properly, quests/npcs would very rarely (or never) stop giving gold, because various taxes would keep cycling the gold back into the system. To prevent players from hoarding, there can be universal taxes (think of property/sales taxes in RL) to prevent people from not providing gold back into circulation. So as an example: A player obtains a small fortune and quits. The tax system in place will automatically tax that player's money and put it back into circulation. (X% per day or something)
The only time the system would stop providing money is if the amount of players "grinding gold" is larger than what the taxes (or other sinks) are putting back in.
To reiterate, I have no clue if this would actually work or not, it is just an idea I find interesting.
To reiterate, I have no clue if this would actually work or not, it is just an idea I find interesting.
Yes it is interesting to think about
It would be great to test it out in some way.
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bloodprophetMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
A couple of years ago there was a thread about RMT and ways to prevent it. There was mention of a game(don't remember which one) that doesn't allow players to trade in game currency. As a result players used other things as currency. The same would happen here.
If you read Tomas Sowell he talks about how at an internment camp in WW2 the prisoners had no money. They all got the same daily kits of rations. They all chocolate and cigarettes. Clearly some people don't want one of these things and barter began trading one for the other.
People will just find away and if the system is bad enough they will find a substitute. If a developer took complete control of the economy and stopped all player trading of in came currency and items. People would still find away or just not even bother playing.
Most people never listen. They are just waiting on you to quit making noise so they can.
A couple of years ago there was a thread about RMT and ways to prevent it. There was mention of a game(don't remember which one) that doesn't allow players to trade in game currency. As a result players used other things as currency. The same would happen here.
If you read Tomas Sowell he talks about how at an internment camp in WW2 the prisoners had no money. They all got the same daily kits of rations. They all chocolate and cigarettes. Clearly some people don't want one of these things and barter began trading one for the other.
People will just find away and if the system is bad enough they will find a substitute. If a developer took complete control of the economy and stopped all player trading of in came currency and items. People would still find away or just not even bother playing.
I don't see how this applies here? As long as the starting pool of money is large enough to support a whole server, currency is always there and trade-able. I feel like this is assuming an extreme case where all currency is out of circulation (which again, is prevented by various taxes/sinks) and for some reason people are not willing to use it.
This is due to people won't be frivously spending their gold, item sellers will sell their goods for lower prices.
Along the months/years, when people start leaving the game, a portion of this gold will still be in their wallets, they will logoff and that gold could never circulate again. in games people leave no heirs and the government (npcs) won't absorv your gold either.
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
In EVE, when people have less ISK (EVE's credits), the prices always go down for 2 reasons:
sellers lwill ower their prices
people start selling out their stocks of all kinds of items, people just sell directly to buy orders (lower price than sell orders), so there's some market crashes sometimes
In 2019, I drove prices up for the Tritanium mineral, it is the most important mineral in the game, the prices went from +5 ISK to over 8 ISK. I did this in seconds, because I had too much ISK i simply bought the market, the price change was so significant that it made the news, people were talking about it in the Talking In Stations show.
That's what happens when some people have too much money in the game, they can force prices up. Or when someone can hoard way more gold than others.
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
If there was only ever gonna be say 1 million gold someone (Many) will have it as there goal to collect all the gold in the game and not spend it :P eventualy bartering would be the way people do trade.
That being said i think every year or so they should have a world event that promotes spending ingame currency to remove it from the server. Could use it to unlock cosmetics/titles and other things. (Could be a way to buy cosmetics from the cash shop via ingame gold that normally you could. aka trade gold to NPC for token, token then used to buy some items on cash shop this is just to remove excess gold potentially building on the server to keep economy from infinitely inflating
Since nearly all devs in gaming history suck, I never played a game in which you can melt gold coins into gold ingots. No game dev though this was important, because their games suck, suck with infinite sinks of coins and materials
Game devs suck, I guess this in horrible humanity, sociopaths become politicians and people with no creativity become game devs
Maybe this planet is some kind of hell where people purify their sins by being tortured under such contradictions
Someday we will have a game where we can melt coins into ingots
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
Someday we will have a game where we can melt coins into ingots
There are MMO's where you can do this.
Good developers though, they avoid it because it just causes issues with the game.
It's one of the many things that while you may think you want it, you really don't. In this specific case, the game developers you are claiming to suck are literally protecting you from yourself.
Let's say that a game starts with X amount of gold that is given to players by the typical means: mobs, quests, npcs, etc. But once X reaches 0, those systems temporarily no longer give out gold rewards. The only way to get them to payout again is by cycling the gold through the game's gold sinks: taxes, fees, etc that would feedback into that initial pool of gold.
What does the game's economy end up looking like with a system like this?
Do you think this is sustainable through close control of the gold sinks?
Would market prices actually be stable? How would player greed influence the economy?
Do players just hoard money? does it become extremely difficult to gain wealth as a new player?
Do materials/items constantly lose value, since the total amount of materials is increasing?
I'm genuinely curious of people's thoughts on this, as I don't know of any game that has/had a system like this.
***EDIT***
Seems like the general consensus is that "players will just hoard money". So let's move beyond that point and assume there is an automatic tax system in place that prevents players from hoarding forever. This system would tax X% of every players total currency amount and put it back into circulation on a regular basis.
Does this solve the hoarding problem? do other gold sinks need to co-exist with this tax system? what other types of consequences does this tax system have?
So the overall proposition is that of a limited currency unit model, based on the amount of players/accounts of a server. Obviously the transfer of currency to a newly created character could increase the overall currency supply of that server, but with characters per server presumably limited as well, there would be some kind of hard cap on how much currency there is in the system. With Ashes having also limited progression (we can't just innovate completely new weapons, discover new lands and expand the number of nodes) that would mean that the economy and its prices would somewhat stabilize on some level. Prices would go up if a significant enough Node gets destroyed and if an expansion would bring us new land, Nodes or items, the prices in the economy overall would go down as it tries to spread with the players.
Depending on how strong the gold sinks are compared to the rate of accumulation this will be either deflationary or simply ineffective (if replacing the gold I lose to sinks can be acquired easily, it won't have an influence on the overall economy).
Taking this all into consideration, I think it is not too bad of an idea to at least have a "soft cap" of sorts on the amount of gold a player can hold. But it would have to be designed in a way that it is not perceived as punishment for extra efforts. e.g. just raising more and more taxes on rich players ultimately would discourage them to earn that gold in the first place, or they will hoard it in assets that are unaffected by the tax, driving up the prices of whatever goods they decided to hoard. (Real life vibes 2012-2022, eh?)
Suffice to say: A cap is a good idea but it has to be a cap that makes sense and is not punishing.
I don't think RMT would work well in a game with limited gold. I think RMT players would try tough.
First of all, the RMT prices would skyrocket for sure, but such players would never amass large quantities of gold, because they would not find gold to be farmed. In the long run the gold farmers for RMT would go broke because they would never have a steady supply of gold.
Many RMTers are doing this to pay rent and for their basic needs, they would not risk spending too much time in a game where they can't have a steady source of gold, the risk is too great since it involves paying real life bills.
I don't think RMT would work well in a game with limited gold. I think RMT players would try tough.
First of all, the RMT prices would skyrocket for sure, but such players would never amass large quantities of gold, because they would not find gold to be farmed. In the long run the gold farmers for RMT would go broke because they would never have a steady supply of gold.
Many RMTers are doing this to pay rent and for their basic needs, they would not risk spending too much time in a game where they can't have a steady source of gold, the risk is too great since it involves paying real life bills.
or...they would just sell the items that you would buy with gold instead ._.
Let's say that a game starts with X amount of gold that is given to players by the typical means: mobs, quests, npcs, etc. But once X reaches 0, those systems temporarily no longer give out gold.
@MrPockets
*Please read this for a perfect answer.*
You must never have played RuneScape. As a veteran who has played since 2003, I have been through all of the types of economies. The one you're talking about is most similar to the early days. People just find either common very high stackable items with a base vendor value or an item that is tough to get but slow to enter game so that way the price can't fluctuate much at all.
Example: "Mint Cake" -You can see the history of those in RuneScape and read about it on old posts/forums if you want. Someone also made a video on their history. https://youtu.be/Fd02p2aNtbA
You must never have played RuneScape. As a veteran who has played since 2003, I have been through all of the types of economies. The one you're talking about is most similar to the early days. People just find either common very high stackable items with a base vendor value or an item that is tough to get but slow to enter game so that way the price can't fluctuate much at all.
Example: "Mint Cake" -You can see the history of those in RuneScape and read about it on old posts/forums if you want. Someone also made a video on their history.
@Xnate13X
After looking into both of those examples, my understanding is that these items were used to solve a specific problem - the fact that runescape has a hard limit on the amount of cash 1 character can have. Or is there something else I am missing?
I don't deny that players might start using items as a currency, but I don't see how the examples you provided showcase a similar situation. They just show that players in the past and/or other games have used items in place of a game's currency.
One of the underlying questions I have is: would the system(s) I've laid out actually encourage this behavior from players? Or could it be stable? I personally have no idea, and think it would be an interesting experiment.
If no coins are minted anymore and only those in game are in circulation, players will find another currency for as many things as possible (aka when with other players). Trading items directly. Used to see a lot of that in EverQuest on my server: trading this item and this item plus X pp against that other item.
Hard currencies will be reserved for trading with NPCs.
Some drop items would probably become more valuable than their use would suggest if they were easy to trade to NPC merchants for gold.
Better start collecting sea shells folks.
I had never thought about this idea before and thought this take was interesting to think about!
***EDIT***
Seems like the general consensus is that "players will just hoard money". So let's move beyond that point and assume there is an automatic tax system in place that prevents players from hoarding forever. This system would tax X% of every players total currency amount and put it back into circulation on a regular basis.
Does this solve the hoarding problem? do other gold sinks need to co-exist with this tax system? what other types of consequences does this tax system have?
This would force players to keep playing, or lose their money if they decide to stop playing for a while Maybee their could be a wealth cap instead, this would keep prices more stable, prevent inflation
the beginning of wisdom is to know you know nothing
This would force players to keep playing, or lose their money if they decide to stop playing for a while
I think this is probably the biggest flaw with the idea. Feels bad if your money is gone when you come back from a break. And then the obvious solution to this is to "cash out" your gold into items instead. Then the entire economy just becomes items to avoid taxes.
There are probably solutions to these problems, but I'm not sure if it's worth it. I think it's probably best (and much easier) to just have solid gold sinks that keep up with the infinite gold coming in.
Comments
this would be a great idea, but i see a lot of problems:
that would probably kill the economic or that currency. Because merchants would have most of the money and sell it for real money on ebay.
also what if most of the player would save up money for bedder equipp? than someone have to burn his money or a merchant would be some kind of pawnshop/banking house and gain interest charges.
And if a wealthy player suddenly quits - all of his money is out of the economic circle and you have to replace this - so what to do if they return again after a while?
Do you agree, or do you think a fixed money supply can work?
This too doesnt work because we already know there will be an infinite supply or natural resources like wood, metals, plants, furs etc, so you just end having humongous stockpiles of low and high tier resources that sell for dirt cheap, and it forces players to make alt after alt after alt to grind out quests and cash, which I dont think is the game experience we are looking for.
I dont want to get into the RMT discussion because I feel a game should do everything possible to eliminate it right out. RMT will always go up and down according to the games popularity and state of economy.
I agree, I'd rather not worry about the RMT in this discussion.
To get back to the main topic. I'm not claiming any of this would actually work, I just think it would be an interesting experiment, or something to think about.
As for more details on what's in my head: If designed properly, quests/npcs would very rarely (or never) stop giving gold, because various taxes would keep cycling the gold back into the system. To prevent players from hoarding, there can be universal taxes (think of property/sales taxes in RL) to prevent people from not providing gold back into circulation. So as an example: A player obtains a small fortune and quits. The tax system in place will automatically tax that player's money and put it back into circulation. (X% per day or something)
The only time the system would stop providing money is if the amount of players "grinding gold" is larger than what the taxes (or other sinks) are putting back in.
To reiterate, I have no clue if this would actually work or not, it is just an idea I find interesting.
Yes it is interesting to think about
It would be great to test it out in some way.
If you read Tomas Sowell he talks about how at an internment camp in WW2 the prisoners had no money. They all got the same daily kits of rations. They all chocolate and cigarettes. Clearly some people don't want one of these things and barter began trading one for the other.
People will just find away and if the system is bad enough they will find a substitute. If a developer took complete control of the economy and stopped all player trading of in came currency and items. People would still find away or just not even bother playing.
I don't see how this applies here? As long as the starting pool of money is large enough to support a whole server, currency is always there and trade-able. I feel like this is assuming an extreme case where all currency is out of circulation (which again, is prevented by various taxes/sinks) and for some reason people are not willing to use it.
This is due to people won't be frivously spending their gold, item sellers will sell their goods for lower prices.
Along the months/years, when people start leaving the game, a portion of this gold will still be in their wallets, they will logoff and that gold could never circulate again. in games people leave no heirs and the government (npcs) won't absorv your gold either.
In 2019, I drove prices up for the Tritanium mineral, it is the most important mineral in the game, the prices went from +5 ISK to over 8 ISK. I did this in seconds, because I had too much ISK i simply bought the market, the price change was so significant that it made the news, people were talking about it in the Talking In Stations show.
That's what happens when some people have too much money in the game, they can force prices up. Or when someone can hoard way more gold than others.
That being said i think every year or so they should have a world event that promotes spending ingame currency to remove it from the server. Could use it to unlock cosmetics/titles and other things. (Could be a way to buy cosmetics from the cash shop via ingame gold that normally you could. aka trade gold to NPC for token, token then used to buy some items on cash shop this is just to remove excess gold potentially building on the server to keep economy from infinitely inflating
Game devs suck, I guess this in horrible humanity, sociopaths become politicians and people with no creativity become game devs
Maybe this planet is some kind of hell where people purify their sins by being tortured under such contradictions
Someday we will have a game where we can melt coins into ingots
Good developers though, they avoid it because it just causes issues with the game.
It's one of the many things that while you may think you want it, you really don't. In this specific case, the game developers you are claiming to suck are literally protecting you from yourself.
So the overall proposition is that of a limited currency unit model, based on the amount of players/accounts of a server. Obviously the transfer of currency to a newly created character could increase the overall currency supply of that server, but with characters per server presumably limited as well, there would be some kind of hard cap on how much currency there is in the system. With Ashes having also limited progression (we can't just innovate completely new weapons, discover new lands and expand the number of nodes) that would mean that the economy and its prices would somewhat stabilize on some level. Prices would go up if a significant enough Node gets destroyed and if an expansion would bring us new land, Nodes or items, the prices in the economy overall would go down as it tries to spread with the players.
Depending on how strong the gold sinks are compared to the rate of accumulation this will be either deflationary or simply ineffective (if replacing the gold I lose to sinks can be acquired easily, it won't have an influence on the overall economy).
Taking this all into consideration, I think it is not too bad of an idea to at least have a "soft cap" of sorts on the amount of gold a player can hold. But it would have to be designed in a way that it is not perceived as punishment for extra efforts. e.g. just raising more and more taxes on rich players ultimately would discourage them to earn that gold in the first place, or they will hoard it in assets that are unaffected by the tax, driving up the prices of whatever goods they decided to hoard. (Real life vibes 2012-2022, eh?)
Suffice to say: A cap is a good idea but it has to be a cap that makes sense and is not punishing.
First of all, the RMT prices would skyrocket for sure, but such players would never amass large quantities of gold, because they would not find gold to be farmed. In the long run the gold farmers for RMT would go broke because they would never have a steady supply of gold.
Many RMTers are doing this to pay rent and for their basic needs, they would not risk spending too much time in a game where they can't have a steady source of gold, the risk is too great since it involves paying real life bills.
or...they would just sell the items that you would buy with gold instead ._.
@MrPockets
*Please read this for a perfect answer.*
You must never have played RuneScape. As a veteran who has played since 2003, I have been through all of the types of economies. The one you're talking about is most similar to the early days. People just find either common very high stackable items with a base vendor value or an item that is tough to get but slow to enter game so that way the price can't fluctuate much at all.
Example: "Mint Cake" -You can see the history of those in RuneScape and read about it on old posts/forums if you want. Someone also made a video on their history.
Example 2: "Spirit Shards" -For the steady value item. Read the "Storage of Value" section of this wiki page. https://runescape.wiki/w/Spirit_shards
@Xnate13X
After looking into both of those examples, my understanding is that these items were used to solve a specific problem - the fact that runescape has a hard limit on the amount of cash 1 character can have. Or is there something else I am missing?
I don't deny that players might start using items as a currency, but I don't see how the examples you provided showcase a similar situation. They just show that players in the past and/or other games have used items in place of a game's currency.
One of the underlying questions I have is: would the system(s) I've laid out actually encourage this behavior from players? Or could it be stable? I personally have no idea, and think it would be an interesting experiment.
I found this intruiging:
I had never thought about this idea before and thought this take was interesting to think about!
This would force players to keep playing, or lose their money if they decide to stop playing for a while Maybee their could be a wealth cap instead, this would keep prices more stable, prevent inflation
I think this is probably the biggest flaw with the idea. Feels bad if your money is gone when you come back from a break. And then the obvious solution to this is to "cash out" your gold into items instead. Then the entire economy just becomes items to avoid taxes.
There are probably solutions to these problems, but I'm not sure if it's worth it. I think it's probably best (and much easier) to just have solid gold sinks that keep up with the infinite gold coming in.