suply and demand

[Mukami]

I saw there was talk of economics before but it was all tied into thiefs so i wanted this to be seperate.

1. Giveme Head? ? ? ? ? ?Paladin? ? DarkerSideOfLight? ?266570399
? 2. Cowman? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Witchunter ~Saiyan Empire~? ? ?265140688? ? ? ?
? 3. Ecko Fucked? ? ? ? ? ?Paladin? ? ArchRivals? ? ? ? ? 259592301
? 4. BeaNer Prodigy? ? ? ? Warrior? ? ~Saiyan Empire~? ? ?228234307
? 5. Crabby Crabcakes? ? ? Paladin? ? DarkerSideOfLight? ?184008818
? 6. FAG IsHere? ? ? ? ? ? Paladin? ? DarkerSideOfLight? ?169992603
? 7. TacK Cell? ? ? ? ? ? ?Warrior? ? ~\ Pharcyde /~? ? ? 160866815
? 8. Raptus? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Cleric? ? ?~\ Pharcyde /~? ? ? 147434280
? 9. TI King? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Paladin? ? DarkerSideOfLight? ?144357701
10. Leroy NJenkins? ? ? ? Warrior? ? Leeeeeeroy's Army? ?143464862

Basicly they are all plate wearers. i know that just because AC is messed up now but i think if i were a person who made platemail armor i would be rasing my prices. all those people dying and having to buy backup gear would make the demand go up. and the market should show that. If it was nothing but silk weares or leather the same should happen. I was thinking there could be a way to scan the current classes to add a markup to balance. so the least used material {silk, leather, metal (plate,scale,chain)} could increase or decrease maybe 10%.

This could also be reflected in monsters chests. If dragonscale is a dime a dozen because few people are tanks then the odds of it being in a chest should drop. why would someone treasure that if its worth nothing? Also if there is someone constantly killing a monster he should have a little bit smaller treasure each time. like for those who loop giant two-headed troll for the chests they could have a total modified value of 5 runic in stuff/cash the first time then 2 after that but for every 2 hrs that he isnt killed the total value of his chest goes up 1 runic to a max of 5.? ? im sure its overly complex but might be something to think about.

[DeathCow]

I like that top list, it makes me giggle. 

We are looking at some means to make in realm econmics reflect supply and demand,  if I had a plan I'd post more, but atm I'm just kinda in lala land when it comes to plans like these...ATM they are future plans rather than something we are focusing on now.

[The Crazy Animal]

I saw there was talk of economics before but it was all tied into thiefs so i wanted this to be seperate.

That would be my fault I tend to stray from topics to topic sometimes.

Basicly they are all plate wearers. i know that just because AC is messed up now but i think if i were a person who made platemail armor i would be rasing my prices. all those people dying and having to buy backup gear would make the demand go up. and the market should show that. If it was nothing but silk weares or leather the same should happen. I was thinking there could be a way to scan the current classes to add a markup to balance. so the least used material {silk, leather, metal (plate,scale,chain)} could increase or decrease maybe 10%.

The S&D system that I thought about would be entirely material driven so each piece of gear would contain a set of material properties that give the item it's value. This is very complicated though and must be tied into the overall economic model since good realm design should portray both Player use and NPC use of items. This is a huge topic though and much more then I feel like typing about right now. so onto your next little bit.

This could also be reflected in monsters chests. If dragonscale is a dime a dozen because few people are tanks then the odds of it being in a chest should drop. why would someone treasure that if its worth nothing?

This would only make sense if people that horded treasure threw away things. Lets face it you don't get a box of goodies by throwing stuff away. Always remember that old saying "one man's junk is another mans treasure", this saying is very true to life. Treasure chests should also represent the npc hording the items usefull to them so you shouldn't find a silk wearing NPC hording away lots of plate gear anyway it would just be bad content design.

Also if there is someone constantly killing a monster he should have a little bit smaller treasure each time. like for those who loop giant two-headed troll for the chests they could have a total modified value of 5 runic in stuff/cash the first time then 2 after that but for every 2 hrs that he isnt killed the total value of his chest goes up 1 runic to a max of 5.? ? im sure its overly complex but might be something to think about.

This could be cycled with some type of a function however I'm against monsters dropping chests in the first place. I would rather see chests be in a guarded room of some type even if that room is guarded by the NPC themselves. The chest though should be left visible or hidden in the room when you walk in. The only Non-humanoid monster type NPC that really should have any type of treasure is maybe a dragon however the types of items in a dragons lair should be left on the ground more so then in chests. Other wise chests should be restricted to either abandoned areas where a humanoid NPC once dwelt or inhabited areas where they now dwell.

Back to the Cycling function this could be done by having smaller chests, each chest would then spawn on a timer so the room would slowly go from say 1 chest to 5 chests then stop. Further the types of chests spawned could also be varied at random so that players would not have a clue where a specific item might be readily scripted for by opening chests.

[Mukami]

The S&D system that I thought about would be entirely material driven so each piece of gear would contain a set of material properties that give the item it's value. This is very complicated though and must be tied into the overall economic model since good realm design should portray both Player use and NPC use of items.

One of the things that gave majormud alot of its charm was that many parts of it were kept simple. It had a fairly basic economic system and i like that about it. Money is a large part of the game but i dont think its something that is worth spending too much time on or getting burnt out over. It seems a little over ambitious to think of all the different materials and have each one on a varying flex value system.

This would only make sense if people that horded treasure threw away things. Lets face it you don't get a box of goodies by throwing stuff away. Always remember that old saying "one man's junk is another mans treasure", this saying is very true to life. Treasure chests should also represent the npc hording the items usefull to them so you shouldn't find a silk wearing NPC hording away lots of plate gear anyway it would just be bad content design.

How many times have you gone to dark-elf queen or duergar lord and seen the mass of good chest items just sitting there because its too much work to bother bringing them back to town to sell? Why would they keep searching out those items that are littering their area or value something that is common or trash. like passing the 5 day old deathpile from the noob warrior, again, and not bothering to grab the plate to sell. And i know that as a mystic in majormud now if i pass woodland robes, antler helm, and a full set of platinum plate i'd grab that even though it doesnt fit my character build. why? cause it has value. But i do agree if it fits the characters build he should be more likely to have it (like the uber common dragonscale would still have great value to a warrior and thus have a higer % that it would be in his treasure room).

[The Crazy Animal]

One of the things that gave majormud alot of its charm was that many parts of it were kept simple. It had a fairly basic economic system and i like that about it. Money is a large part of the game but i dont think its something that is worth spending too much time on or getting burnt out over. It seems a little over ambitious to think of all the different materials and have each one on a varying flex value system.

Your right it is a very ambitious project that would likely get put in place last however the backbone of the system needs to be well thought out in advance. The first part of S&D that would likely go into the game would be item level or higher and handled by the shops themselves this will give us the ability to test the system prior to spending a huge effort on it. Any S&D system though would run in the background of the game with very limited effect on the individual player other than on their character's coin purse. However the more complex the system is the more ways there are to balance the economy of the game. A balanced economy that keeps liquid capital valueable is very much needed in the game system. As the value of Liguid capital is hugely important in the game, "money should equal power like it use too in mmud prior to the advent of the super huge drop rates".

The point to having a good economy in the game is to keep value of money on par with the cost of goods over the course of a long term game. This was mmuds problem money floods into the game as did items and nothing ever gets removed. So after a while the realm has an inbalance of liquid capital and material capital and very little was done to remove or balance it back out. Going down to the material level of an item can help micro manage everything from coin currency to the price of items because it breaks everything down to a level that can be individually balanced or adjusted for over the course of the game with the effects taking place across the entire realm.

If all items can be reduced to their materials by some type of recycling system then we can put into place methods of decaying the material amounts with in the game. By removing material (non-liquid) capital from the game it also removes the available liquid capital. The end function of this then serves to balance any of the inbalances in the economy cause by the constant in flooding of new capital. However at the players point of view they would not be aware of much of this happening.

Giving items material properties also serves as a way to control NPC crafters such as blacksmiths if you have a way to tell them that and item contains 100 units of gold 5 units of iron, and 2 units of leather then they can charge the players the correct amounts of materials for making an item rather then needing to code each seperate amount into the textblock preforming the action. NPC crafters can also have a decay function in the game by giving them a waste percentage. The wast percentage would tell the NPC to ask for more units of a material then it is actually worth. So if money is scarce you could then go around picking up that excess plate gear left around and recycle it take the material to a smith and have them make you the broadsword or shield that you wanted to buy. Fuctions like this help stablize the effects of a material driven S & D system by providing methods in which new items can be brought into the game with out introducing more material capital into the game.

However there is so much to a system like this because of various interdependacies it makes it hard to post all of it at once. So onto the next part.

How many times have you gone to dark-elf queen or duergar lord and seen the mass of good chest items just sitting there because its too much work to bother bringing them back to town to sell? Why would they keep searching out those items that are littering their area or value something that is common or trash. like passing the 5 day old deathpile from the noob warrior, again, and not bothering to grab the plate to sell. And i know that as a mystic in majormud now if i pass woodland robes, antler helm, and a full set of platinum plate i'd grab that even though it doesnt fit my character build. why? cause it has value. But i do agree if it fits the characters build he should be more likely to have it (like the uber common dragonscale would still have great value to a warrior and thus have a higer % that it would be in his treasure room).

I'm am the biggest hoarder that you will ever probably meet that played mmud. So your really asking the wrong person about leaving stuff laying around because it takes to much time to bring it back to town or a stash spot. In game I normally had about 40 rooms worth of junk. As my favorite off script activity was to just go collect piles of things that were laying around. I was so OCD with this that people use to pay me to be in their gangs just to stock their gang houses with goodies and keep them organized. Needless to say I feel that from doing those things so much it has given me a fairly a good perspective on the principles of item collecting.

Now if I was a monster in the game anything that did not have value to me would be traded for stuff that did or otherwise melted down for the raw materials. So yes items of limited value would be harvested for their materials. In an area such as a compound or fort you are dealing with a micro-economy being such the types of items retained in that area would be things usable to all of the npcs in that area. So if there is a few warriors then there would be some plate gear or chainmail gear even if the boss was a silk wearer. The areas that are scriptable in mmud are almost all considered to be chaotic evil and being such they have very limited non-violent contact with any other alignment type. Being so the ability to harvest the materials they need would be very important to them.

From a game design prospective areas need to be believable this means that a faction with a chaotic evil alignment need to provide for themselves this makes it necessary to have things like a blacksmith or weavers or some supporting area to explain how they keep themselves in weapons and armour. We can do this by giving NPCs certain roles such as a blacksmith and an assistant blacksmith with the supporting rooms forge and armoury, treasure room, and junkyard. As the found items are brought in they are recycled using the system I talked about earlier and then re-made into items useful to that faction. If you were watching this you would see the cleaner agent take the good stuff to the armoury or treasure room and drop the limited value items in the junkyard. The assistant blacksmith then goes to the junkyard and takes the scrap material back to the forge and the blacksmith makes some items. The assistant then takes those items to either the armoury or the treasure room. Going with good game design this would also mean that these rooms of importance would also be some of the most heavily guarded spots in that factions area.

Now since this faction now has some method of production we can track this and provide of functions in the game to make the non-npc monsters spawned in that area dynamically linked to what is in the armoury and treasure room. If the armoury is low on goods then the type of weapons and armour that those mobs have or drop would be of lesser value as well. If the treasury or treasure room is low they might drop less money. This could be depicted by having say the bandits in the bandit keep going from having broadswords to shortswords depending if leo's chest has been raided.

This opens up both opportunities for players to feel out how worthy a target is for questing or for treasure hunting and creates opportunities to play the game stratigicly by slowly cutting off a factions material resourses prior to a boss run. The other things this opens up is dynamicly controled quests, these types of quest would be small side quests based on active storylines in the game.

Since we do want the NPC life of the game to be more active and interesting to interact with this means that Faction groups need some interplay back and forth as well. One of the ways this can be done in a semi-controled way is having faction groups deplicted as trading materials back and forth from faction group to faction group. If we are dealing with a material driven system this gives us lots of points in which mini-quests or other player interaction could be opened up. For example lets say that there are 2 faction groups A and B that have a trade route between them. When faction group A collects 1000 units of iron a caravan quest opens up to transport this iron to faction group b. So In this caravan quest a player or group of players is then hired to follow and defend the caravan containing the iron. Another caravan type quest that could generated at the same time by say faction group c and this would be to stop that caravan from reaching its destination.

[The Crazy Animal]

I've been thinking off and on about how to pull off S&D in the realm few brief ideas:

Coding Materials onto Items:
The easiest way I can figure out to apply material values onto items would be doing it using placeholder abilities. This could then be easily added to a new or existing item using the value of the ability for the amount.

Example of a Material weight chart: (mmud was really bad with this and we should probably fix this anyway.)
Gold: 10, encumbrance per unit
Iron: 8, encumbrance per unit
Mithril: 6, encumbrance per unit
Leather: 4, encumbrance per unit
Silk: 1, encumbrance per unit

Example golden Sickle:
Gold 6
Leather 1
Total weight 64 (only 1 off from mmud)

Mithril chainmail hauberk
Mithril 130
Leather 5
Total weight 800 (exact to mmud)

Tracking the Amounts:
These material amounts would need to be tracked as they are bought and sold in the realm. So each items placeholder values when in stock at a shop would be calculated to make up a Common Market amount. So if you sold 5 mithril chainmail hauberks this would add 3900 units of mithril into the common market. If you bough 5 then you would remove 3900 units of mithril. Each Material would then be paired with a floating price.

Example:
Mithril is worth about 1.5 plat or 1500 gold coins.
There currently is, 1,000,000 units of mithril present on the common market.
3900 units of mithril are being bought as.

So we need to calculate the change in the demand first:
N_Quanity/O_Quanity? = %change (in quantity demanded)
(3,900/1,000,000) = 0.0039%
So now we need to lower the price by that amount:
O_Price - (O_Price * %change) = N_Price
1500-(1500*0.0039%) --> 1500 - 5.85 = 1494.15

So the price would fall for mithril chainmail hauberks from
130*1500=195,000 gold to 130*1494.15 = 194,239.5 gold

Now if someone from that new lower price goes and buys 15 of them this will cause the price to rise:
-196,189.5/1,003,900= -0.1954273333997410100607630242056
194,239.5 - (-37,960.70) = 232,200.20 gold

However this can quickly generate a problem as the person that just bought the 15 of them could make 37,960.7 gold in profit re-selling them at that new market price. Now some of that profit will be diminished by the lower resale value but still that is too easy of a profit though so there needs to be ways to limit a player from making quick money like that. ?We don?t want the players to be dirt poor but we need money to remain valuable? so the amount of each material on the market might need to be artificially inflated beyond that which is represented in the game via material goods.

Beyond the Materials, Calculating the Value of a Manufactured Product:
Going beyond the materials of the value each item is defined with a set of abilities the more abilities that an object has tends to increase the value of an item to players. This means that other things that effect value of an object should be the abilities on it such as magic, enchantment spells, hit magic? These would all need to have a floating value on the market.

Enchantment spells would need to be handled per spell value. Each enchantment spell should have a floating value in the game. So an item with CastSp 111 would increase in value based on its ability to cast spell # 111 The learnsp ability would function like this as well.

Each item should use the quality ability to determine the value of the quality of the manufacturing so items of quality 1 will have a lower price then say an item of quality 5 even if they are the same material and amount.

Each of these things should have an effect on the end price of goods too.