Dynamic prices to control inflaction

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Habari
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Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Habari »

Code: Select all

RP=(FP*pMG)/rMG
RP= Real price which the object in shop/npc will be sold
FP=fixed price decides which objects are more valuable than others (could be prices currently used)
pMG= perfect money amount in game (can someone tell me what this should be?)
rMG= real amount of money in game (counted every week maybe?)
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Sanga
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Sanga »

Habari wrote:

Code: Select all

RP=(FP*pMG)/rMG
RP= Real price which the object in shop/npc will be sold
FP=fixed price decides which objects are more valuable than others (could be prices currently used)
pMG= perfect money amount in game (can someone tell me what this should be?)
rMG= real amount of money in game (counted every week maybe?)
Have you considered the effect of this on newbies? I would be afraid that they would be disproportionally affected by this, since it's already hard enough for newbies to gather enough GP to buy basic equipment.

The problem is once players reaches a certain level (have best-available equipment), they simply don't buy much from NPCs (with my main character, I haven't bought anything from NPCs in a long time, with the exception of arrows and beer). Whereas newbie/low-level characters tend to buy from NPCs much more often (upgrading equipment).

Money sinks to counteract inflation should be targeted primarily at the "rich" players, who have plenty of GP and nothing to spend it on, while having little or no effect on low-level players. I suspect implementing this idea would have the opposite effect, with low-level players feeling most of the effect.
Habari
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Habari »

The ammount of money a newbie starst with could also be changed with the formula
the biggest effect of this formula is that people would be more aware of the inflaction
when prices go up every week , maybe rich characters will be pressed by newbies to give away some money , we could add very expensive items to shops for rich players

also , i think only active players should be taken into account when counting money in game,
this is players thath play very often , those rich players htat play once every two years are not going to affect gameplay with their money. also note rich players on top 50 some of them are clan donation characters wich are used to store money not to play , those wouldnt count either
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feline monstrosity
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by feline monstrosity »

The problem with that is when the system suddenly stops counting a player because he's not been playing for a while and that layer has a huge amount of money. Suddenly all that money isn't included and prices drop by a lot.
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Sanga
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Sanga »

Habari wrote:The ammount of money a newbie starst with could also be changed with the formula
the biggest effect of this formula is that people would be more aware of the inflaction
when prices go up every week , maybe rich characters will be pressed by newbies to give away some money , we could add very expensive items to shops for rich players

also , i think only active players should be taken into account when counting money in game,
this is players thath play very often , those rich players htat play once every two years are not going to affect gameplay with their money. also note rich players on top 50 some of them are clan donation characters wich are used to store money not to play , those wouldnt count either
So when prices go up, newbie's are expected to become beggars? I think there's enough of that in the game as it is.

Adding very expensive items sounds good at first glance, but how many of a given expensive item are the rich players going to buy? Adding a new hat or such to an NPC would create a short-term money sink, but once all the "rich" players have one, the effect would stop. Unless you're continually adding such items, this isn't a viable long-term solution.
feline monstrosity wrote:The problem with that is when the system suddenly stops counting a player because he's not been playing for a while and that layer has a huge amount of money. Suddenly all that money isn't included and prices drop by a lot.
And don't forget the other side - a "rich" player who's been out of the game for a while returns, and suddenly prices go up.
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Rotonen
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Rotonen »

Before going into this, we would actually need an economy system to be bulit and implemented, so we could see and iterate how it should work.

At this point this is utterly useless.
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Crush
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Crush »

Trying to combensate for inflantion by changing the NPC prices would make the inflantion even worse because it would also increase the money people get for selling their stuff.

What we need is a money sink in the game which burns money continuously.
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by feline monstrosity »

What would be good for that would be a huge thing which people spend money on when they reach a certain point, like mounts in WoW.
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Rotonen
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Rotonen »

Instead of solving the problems which do not exist yet, try to design the system from ground up (resources, how do they come into play, what do you do with them) in a way which would minimize them automatically and dynamically on a system level?
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Crush
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Crush »

Huge investment money sinks - like the epic mounts in WoW - are only a temporary solution because you only have to buy one in your whole career. After you bought it you again don't know what to do with your money. You will spend more than necessary for commodities and collectibles, thus increase the prices and fuel the inflantion.

I made a nice chart about how the economy of TMW should work IMO a while ago:
Image

The basic message is: Everything that comes into the game has to leave the game sooner or later. Otherwise values will accumulate and an inflantion will result.

The only way to do this is - although it will not be very popular - equipment decay. It might be slightly annoying that you have to replace your equipment at regular intervals but it will ensure that the economy will never run out of demand.
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Rotonen
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Rotonen »

Instead of breaking down completely, I suggest for the items to start to lose their attributes when used. Slowly, very slowly. This way you are not suddenly left with a useless piece of junk, but rather you might have wanted to migrate to better equipment anyway due to character development / excess money and this is the final straw and a bit of a push from the side of the economy.

This is a very hard aspect to get right in order not to make the gameplay tedious and in general not fun.
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Superkoop »

By equipment decay, do you mean each wearable item will have a set number of points, and they will decay as you fight, or much more slowly, as you just sit and wear them. This would allow players to take their equipment to a blacksmith and have him fix the equipment for the player making it workable again. Also, it could be implemented that for a very large price you can raise the number of decay points the item has.
The amount you can raise the total Decay Points, would have a set limit, and the only real advantage to this should be that the player doesn't have to bother going to the blacksmith as often.
Also, the player should be given a very big warning when an item is about to break, so the player will have a chance to unequip the armor, and not have it totally break on him.
Another idea would be that the armor would never be totally destroyed, but rather would just reach a point where it is unwearable, and is called broken. And it costs the player a very pretty GP penny to actually make a "broken" item wearable again. Thus making the player prefer to get their items fixed, before they reach a "broken" state.

Since it looks like it will all really boil down to equipment decay, this will be very important, and will require very careful tweaking for the time of decay, and the cost of repairing.
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Crush
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Crush »

I had something in mind like giving each equipment piece a number of hit points which is reduced when used in combat (in case of weapons whenever they deal damage, in case of armors whenever they absorb damage). Equipment decay for sitting around and/or chatting would be a slap in the face of all role-players and socializers. When the hit points reach zero the item becomes unusable.

The goal of equipment decay is to make the item useless sooner or later so that it is taken out of the game. This means that equipment may not be repaired indefinitely.

I had the possibility to repair items in mind, but only with permanent negative consequences for the item. I thought about either lowering the maximum hit points with each repair so that the item has to be repaired more and more frequently or lowering the quality grade of the item with each repair (see my crafting proposal for information on quality grades) which will result in a recalculation of its stats (which can theoretically be better than before but will usually be worse).
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Habari
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Habari »

crush said:

Trying to compensate for inflation by changing the NPC prices would make the inflation even worse because it would also increase the money people get for selling their stuff.

What we need is a money sink in the game which burns money continuously.
No actually , mi idea is that the formula only affects buying prices not selling prices , the huge difference of buy/sell price would remove money from the game without creating any.

About he graphic i would like ti point out that in real life money isnt destroyed or "taken out of the world" and yet the economy works , the graphic should rather be a circle , hte important thing isnt the ammount of money but having prices , and currency that respons to them..
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Re: Dynamic prices to control inflaction

Post by Habari »

i would also like to add , talking about newbies , that i have played MMORPGS where you had to work hard for a week (without having any initial amount) to EARN the equivalent to 10 GP
and IT WAS FUN to play. Please google argentum online and you will see an example of economy run by hard work with social differences but where every one is happy :D the game is free but sadly it is only in Spanish :(
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